Suicide Lane
by divine energy
Summary: No one knows where you go when you die. But no one even asks where you go when you kill yourself. That's a road you walk alone. Rated for swearing and mentions of suicide.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

Johnny Cade didn't have a gun. It was a constant worry in the back of his mind. Not so much a worry as a reminder or something along those lines. But he didn't need a reminder. Most of his life already served him that purpose.

The morning of his sixteenth birthday was a Tuesday. The sun was weakly peeking over, although the first of March was still clinging to winter's chill. The cold crept under doors and windows, and Johnny had had an uneasy night. He'd tossed and turned all night, because he was so cold, and because he was dreading the following day. He didn't know why he was so scared of it being his birthday. Did he think that it meant he had to act differently? Treat things a different way? It didn't matter, he wasn't about to do it.

He had decided that he was not going to school, and the fact that he knew he would be barely able to keep his head up only contributed to his resolution to avoid school. Ponyboy would want Johnny to go, so that he could try and make his birthday a good one, and Sodapop – Ponyboy's older brother – always liked it when Johnny went to school. Soda hated school, and was resiliently insistent on the fact that he just wasn't cut out for school – dumb, in other words. Johnny was never too wonderful in school either, and he knew he was a little slower. So Soda always liked it when Johnny was there. At least then, they wouldn't have to suffer alone.

Johnny liked it when Soda was there too, for the same reason. He wondered how he'd feel once Soda dropped out. They all knew he was going to; he'd been begging and badgering their oldest brother Darry to let him for a month now. Darry was in charge now, after their folks had been killed in a car wreck back in January. Never met two nicer people, Johnny thought, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis.

It made him sick – that two people so good and wonderful were taken away, and Johnny had two parents like he had. Didn't seem fair.

He didn't see much point in staying in bed – his toes would probably freeze off if he delayed getting a pair of shoes on 'em much longer. He just didn't want to move. He didn't want to have to start this day. He wanted it to be over by the time he got up.

The quiet was something eerie and uncommon in the Cade household, and it made Johnny feel quite uneasy as he got to his feet.

The moment he got to his feet, the room swayed and he felt light-headed. He was starving. He dressed in awful rush – or tried to at least, and spent at least ten minutes trying to fit his arm through a sock with a hole in it instead of a shirt. He heard a door slam, and with a frown he headed downstairs. And that's when it struck him. That's when it happened – something clicked.

While they were gone, he ransacked the kitchen for the sharpest knife in it. He didn't use it. Not yet anyway. He didn't see himself as a wrist cutter. He wanted it to be quick. Quick and painless. Like falling asleep. That way, it would be different from life. Johnny turned the knife over in his hand, relishing the quiet.

The phone rang, making Johnny almost jump out of his skin – it had been _so _quiet – but he didn't answer it.

Sighing, he put knife away – hidden, so he'd know where it was. Not today. He thought of Dallas and Ponyboy and the gang. He knew what it was like to have a life full of hurt – could he knowingly deliver the same to them?

The kitchen was a mess. And it certainly hadn't been that bad when he came into it. He left it, retreating to his bedroom, which was also a mess. It was a small, bleak dull room with a small bed with stale sheets in the corner, and a scarcely filled closet in the other. Not much else. It was still a pigsty though. There were empty packets of cigarettes and half full ones strewn across the floor, dirty clothes, clean clothes, cigarette butts. There was an occasional bottle and a stray card or two here and there. There was a broken photo frame around there somewhere, but it was a long time ago that Johnny had taken the picture out and ripped it up into a million tiny pieces which were probably scattered around there too.

He realized, sitting on his bed, that it wasn't a good idea to trap himself in his bedroom. He'd left the kitchen in a state and he wouldn't put it past his father to be soused enough at this hour in the morning to have a go at his favourite punch bag.

With a tired groan, he collapsed back on his bed, wondering if he knew anyone who had a heater. Dallas no doubt had a heater, but he doubted he'd be able to coax it out of him. He ran through everyone else he knew in his mind, trying to think of someone.

He was just dozing off, drifting back to blissful sleep when a rap at the window nearly caused him to fall out of the bed with the shock. He didn't really believe that Soda and Two-Bit were both hanging in his window when he looked over, mainly because they never really came around to his house – and with good reason too – and he'd always gone to theirs. They knew he preferred it.

"Hey, Johnnycake," Two-Bit grinned at Johnny, holding his face lazily in one hand, propped up by the elbow on Johnny's window ledge.

"Folks around?" Soda said, peering around Johnny's tiny room as if he expected them to come running out of a cupboard yelling "Surprise!"

"Naw," Johnny muttered. "I don't know where they're gone, they was gone when I woke up."

"You didn't answer the phone, kid," Two-Bit said reproachfully.

"That was you guys?" Johnny asked them incredulously. Soda nodded energetically.

"We wanted to say happy birthday," he grinned at Johnny, effortlessly it seemed. Soda would dazzle anybody with that grin of his; Johnny almost pitied the poor girls.

"Shouldn't you guys be in school?" Johnny said.

"We could ask you the very same thing," Two-Bit replied, cocking an eyebrow. "Quit stealing my lines, Johnny Cade."

Johnny grinned, and Soda matched it, nodding his head in Two-Bit's direction. "He's avoiding his little broad, that's why we ain't there."

"I'mma go in after lunch," Two-Bit muttered defensively, running a hand through his rust coloured hair.

"Right," Johnny said sarcastically, and Soda snorted his disbelief.

"And I ain't goin' at all," Soda added, frowning a little. "So we said we'd come 'round and see if you was still alive."

Johnny repressed a wince, and Soda's smile faltered a little as he seemed to realize his mistake.

"Anyway, what are we doing tonight?" Johnny blinked at Two-Bit, who had posed the question.

"It's your birthday!" Two-Bit added reproachfully, looking very fearfully between Soda and Johnny.

"Don't worry 'bout it, Two-Bit," Soda said, clapping his hand on the older boy's shoulder. "You won't miss your night."

"I better not," Two-Bit muttered. "I told Louise I was too busy to see her tonight, and the broad's already ticked off with me."

"Why didn't you tell her the truth?" Johnny suggested.

Two-Bit surveyed Johnny for a second, and then cracked a classic grin. "Don't know too many broads, do ya Johnny?"

Soda chuckled, and Johnny went a little pink, but he knew Two-Bit was only playin'. As usual.

"I don't want no trouble tonight," Johnny said in a little voice.

"Aw hell Johnny," Soda said. "Ain't gonna be no trouble. We'll keep it clean, I promise."

"But hell, kid," Two-Bit said, stretching his hand to try and reach a half empty pack of Kools on the floor. Johnny picked them up and handed them to him; he grinned widely. "It's your sixteenth," he said, his voice slightly muffled from holding the cigarette between his lips. "Gotta do somethin'."

"Dal around?" Johnny asked, attempting very hard at keeping his tone offhanded. They seemed to buy it. If they didn't, they pretended they bought it up pretty well.

"Don't know," Two-Bit said ponderingly, stroking his chin as he lit up.

"I'm bettin' he'll be around though," Soda said quickly. "It's Johnny's birthday." Two-Bit shrugged his shoulders.

"So you okay?" Soda turned back to Johnny after a minute or two. Soda was only a few months older than Johnny, but it felt like years or somethin'. They were all so protective; all so careful. Sometimes it made him feel like a baby. But they were like his brothers.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Johnny nodded, suppressing a yawn.

"Okay, we'll see you later kid," Two-Bit muttered, pulling one arm out the window. "Stay in school," he added. Soda laughed and the two boys left, leaving Johnny back in the quiet. Back to his own thoughts.

Eventually, he pulled himself out of his daze and ventured downstairs, deciding there was really no point hanging around here much longer. Ponyboy would be getting lunch soon, so Johnny would head down there and hang around with Pony for lunch. Johnny liked Ponyboy a whole lot, because, even though he was only thirteen, he was a smart kid and he knew when to keep his trap shut.

His thoughts wondered again, strayed to the stack of letters stashed under his bed, carefully concealed under the floorboard that he'd pulled free. They were letters to the only people he knew loved him.

Goodbye letter. He wasn't a good speller and he wasn't too great with words neither, but they made sense and said the words he needed to say. Most were to Ponyboy or Dallas, each trying to explain in a different way what had to be explained. It was damn hard to understand, and Johnny knew that. He didn't know how many there were, but there wasn't a single for his mother or his father.

When it got near enough to lunchtime, about the length of a walking distance to the school, Johnny sought out his jacket and stuffed a full pack of cancer sticks in his pocket.

He met his mother in the hall. He had to meekly flatten himself against the hall to stop her bumping right into him and crushing him – she was surprisingly aggressive for such a little woman. She gave him half of a fleeting look, so quickly and so expressionless that Johnny wondered whether she _actually _did, or had he just imagined it. He thought he was over imagining things like that happening. It never did.

For one, ultimately lifeless second, Johnny hoped against hope that she would look at him. Smile if he was real lucky. If he was unbelievably lucky, wish him a happy birthday.

Of course it didn't. She didn't. _No one _on that side of town was _that _lucky. Johnny's stomach contorted nastily as the sickening, crushing thought that she probably didn't even remember that it was his birthday struck him. His heart plummeted way beyond his stomach, and he quickened his pace once she'd passed him, missing this afternoon's debut performance of throwing things and yelling, and a sharp sudden slap that stung Johnny's cheek and made his eyes water.

He knew he looked drawn, depressed even, as he walked, deep in contemplation. He frowned. It was lonely. Maybe no one noticed, but it was pretty quiet when you were alone. All you had was your own thoughts. And _no one _wants to listen to their own thoughts if they were anything like Johnny Cade.

Right on cue, Ponyboy headed down his school steps just as Johnny stopped right in front of it. Ponyboy Curtis was his best friend, although three years his junior. There was nothing more to it; that was just the way it was.

"Alright Pony?" Johnny smiled his greeting and offered Ponyboy a cigarette, which he accepted gratefully.

"Yeah I'm alright," Ponyboy murmured, taking the lighter Johnny was holding out. "Happy birthday." His smile was edgy.

"Thanks," Johnny mumbled awkwardly. He _had _sort of wished – stupidly, he'd admit – that his friends would have maybe forgotten his birthday. He always forgot Steve's and Darry's, although Soda and Two-Bit both made sure that it was positively impossible to forget their birthday once the day came. The people in the next state over could have heard them. They leaned up against the wall and enjoyed their smoke.

Johnny glanced around him before speaking, to make sure that no one was listening in. "How are them nightmares, Pone?"

Pony's grin vanished and he shrugged his shoulders. "Same 's usual. Darry's taking me to a doctor on Friday."

"Golly, really?"

Ponyboy nodded. "Him and Soda both are worried, I guess." Ponyboy had gone red, so Johnny had dropped the subject, sensing that he didn't want to go on talking about it. He was embarrassed.

Ponyboy had to go back into school, and Johnny wished he'd gone too. But he wasn't going in now, no way.

XXX

Johnny Cade had never wanted a birthday present. From the time he was a kid, he had learned to expect nothing and receive nothing, and that was the way it was done until he turned thirteen years old. He turned up at the Curtises' front door and Mrs. Curtis had appeared there. She had a cake, and a balloon and two bottles of hair grease. The real expensive stuff, and the really good stuff that you don't need to use half of in one go.

But Johnny Cade regarded his thirteenth birthday as one if his worst. Sure, it was awful sweet of them and all that – but he had no recollection of ever feeling happy. At all.

All he felt was a cold, deadened shock rippling through his veins. And then, something dark and something shameful. Envy. He'd never been so jealous in his entire life. What had _they _done, those Curtis boys? To deserve such great parents and happy lives?

He didn't cry, because – as his father constantly told him when he was thirteen while he hit him with his new leather belt – big boys don't cry. But he sure felt like it that day.

And on his thirteenth birthday, he couldn't cry. Tears wouldn't come. It was like they had been shocked into exile. And from that day on, Johnny Cade had not let a single tear squeeze from his eyelid to this day. Not one.

Sitting at the table in The Dingo, these thoughts and memories swarmed like bees in his mind, chasing each other by the tail. It was sunny, he noticed, in most of his memories. The darkest times in his life were full of beaming sunshine. Ironic. Sunshine was meant to make people happy, wasn't it?

Well, not Johnny. Johnny's happiest times, his favourite time was when the sun went away and left him alone and the dark settled in comfortably. Safely.

He was becoming like Dallas Winston. When Johnny closed his eyes, he saw a path, a dirt track. It was stony and windy. It was dark overhead, with a strong moon setting a silver glow on everything its light touched. Johnny knew that, someday, he'd go down that Silver Path.

Dally didn't have a present or anything for Johnny when he turned up, on the off chance – or so he said – but he didn't need one. Him being there was enough for Johnny. Although Dally did press the rest of his Kools into Johnny's hand as they left The Dingo, out to "cause trouble", according to Two-Bit. Two-Bit would talk more in a day than he'd do in a month. Johnny had read that line somewhere.

Sodapop and Two-Bit must have forgotten that they couldn't stay out too late, because it was a school night and Ponyboy wasn't meant to be out at all – he was only there because it was Johnny's birthday – and Johnny didn't want anything for his birthday at all. They were both having too much fun, back flipping down the sidewalk and walking down their hands. Boy, they got some weird looks.

Johnny really wasn't in the mood to celebrate, so he tried to block them out. His hands were in his pockets and he slouched as he walked two paces behind them at all times, so he wouldn't get a foot in his face. His parents were already beating him; he didn't need his friends to start kicking the life out of him.

The six of them – Darry was too busy to be there, although he had apologized to Johnny a thousand times over and made him promise that he'd have a great time without Darry there anyway; Johnny lied – stopped dead in their tracks when the cop car pulled up beside them, and they all glanced at each other, as if asking each other what they had done. Soda was looking at Two-Bit and Two-Bit was looking at Dally, who was staring at Johnny.

Next thing Johnny knew, Dally had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him backwards into a little alleyway just near where they were standing. Johnny looked up at Dally, his white blond hair glinting off the dim light in the alleyway.

"Dal, what're you –" Dally shushed him, and closing his eyes again, Johnny could see that path. Didn't seem a bad old road, now that he thought about it, no matter what Ponyboy said.

Johnny _knew _there was gonna be trouble.

* * *

That's it for now! Please excuse typos, proofread only twice. Updates are -er, sort of guaranteed, and reviews are most appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

"You don't need to get in no trouble, Johnny," Dally muttered, shoving Johnny in the other direction. "Go on, get outta here," he said, giving Johnny's back a little extra push.

Johnny obeyed, although eager to see what was going on. If Dally wanted him to go, he'd go. But where?

There were times when Johnny was fine with going home. He knew he could just keep to himself and keep out of the way, keep his trap shut good and he'd be fine. But there were darker days, when he thought that there was nothing that was more impossible. He felt like he knew he could never face it, and death itself would be a less evil fate. For some reason, these days meant more to Johnny. They made him feel more human. They felt deeper, he supposed.

One thing that no one knew about Johnny Cade was that he hated being alone. He never mentioned it, never said it to anybody, not even Ponyboy. And you didn't talk about stuff like that with Dallas Winston no matter who you were. Even if he had his parents downstairs, shouting blue murder at each other, it was better than sitting alone in the silence. There was nothing worse than the silence. The devouring, consuming silence. It had a way, a knack for just eating away at you, tormenting.

It was a vicious cycle, really. He didn't want his parents to be home, but he also never wanted to be alone.

So Johnny walked, taking as much time as he possibly could and taking solace in the fact that he could still hear people shouting and having a good time in the distance, every so often someone would stumble drunkenly past him in the opposite direction. It was a small comfort.

He supposed the only way he could go was home. Strange really, it was the only path he knew, the only way he knew to go. And it was the one place that he was _sure _would never be home, not in a million years. The lights were on in the window when he arrived. It was chilly out, but what was four or five minutes anyway? How much more frozen to the bone could he get?

It was a strange thing to think, really, that something so small and seemingly harmless could do so much damage. Johnny sat outside his house on the kerb silently, flicking his lighter on and off. The bright, restless ember illuminated the street, danced in the cold air, a small patch of flickering light surround by darkness. It painted restless shadows on the ground as it moved. How easy it would be . . .

How easy would it be, Johnny thought. Just last week he had heard how a family of six had been left homeless when the eldest son had dropped his lighter and their entire house had gone up in flames. How weird it was to think that there was nothing there anymore. Sort of like there was never anything there in the first place. It was depressing really.

Johnny's lighter was actually his father's. Johnny had stolen it on his tenth birthday. It was the one and only thing he considered as a present, and the only thing that actually wasn't. A real present was something earned. That was his philosophy, mainly because he never got anything else any other way.

How easy it would be to drop the lighter aflame and watch his entire life go up in smoke. It was an abysmal scene, although his life was halfway up in flames anyway. Just like that, it would burn. What would happen after the world had burned itself to darkness? The shape of wonder that had overtaken Johnny's mind was a wave of black, and yet he couldn't help these thoughts swimming into his mind, chasing each other's tails. What did it matter, really, if one worthless person decided to end the long struggle a little earlier than it would have ended anyway? There was no point really in his life, no point in any of them being there. Yes, it would be easy to watch the world, to watch _his _world go up in a tango of smokoe and fire, and feel nothing at all. Almost too easy.

The shadows . . . Yes, the world was a frightening place.

Quietly, undisturbed, it began to rain again, light and silently at first. Before long, it was hammering down, so Johnny jumped to his feet, still flicking his lighter. It dropped from his hand, the metal was slippy from the rain, and hit the pavement. It sparked brightly, almost setting a nearby bush on fire. Hurriedly, Johnny stomped out the kindling embers with his foot and trodded inside, shaking out his sopping hair.

The light was still on, but when Johnny crept in, his father was asleep on the couch, his deep rumbling snores echoing around the room. That's when Johnny went up to bed, so tired he could barely remember those last few minutes of consciousness before he hit the bed and blacked out almost instantly.

XXX

The morning of March the third brought torrential, heavy rain the size of marbles thundering against the windows. It was the powerful pounding against his own rickety, cricky window that woke Johnny that morning, with but one thought in his mind:

He was going to school today.

He didn't know why this fact was so determined and resolute in his mind, but it was all the same. There was something hanging over his head in the atmosphere thay Johnny could not ignore. It was telling him to go to school. So he did.

He walked in the rain, isolatedly noting the people rushing past him, desperate to get out of the rain and the cold into the warm and dry. He was soaked to the bone, his hair was dripping and heavy, his clothes were damp and sodden. He was shivering from the rain, and pearly droplets of rain trickled down his arm. When Ponyboy was a kid, he'd called rain 'liquid sunshine'. Maybe he'd picked it up off Soda or his dad or something, but Johnny had always admired it. It made the rain more tolerable for Ponyboy. Johnny was envious of that.

"Johnny!" Two-Bit's unmistakable boom echoed over the school hallway, so that passing teachers threw disgruntled at him as they passed, to which he grinned brightly at them. Johnny shuffled over, avoiding eye contact with the teachers.

"Good to see you back in the ol' institution, kid," Two-Bit said cheerfully.

Johnny shrugged. "They haul you in the other night, Two-Bit?"

"Yeah," Two-Bit sniggered, "Only for the night. Boy, my poor Mama wasn't too impressed, I'll tell ya that much." Johnny's mind turned to Mrs. Mathews, her plump, rounded face masked and distorted with worry. "And Holly just laughed and laughed and laughed," Two-Bit continued. Johnny managed a weak smile, his attention momentarily distracted by a girl who had arrived at Two-Bit's side just in time to hear the end of Two-Bit's speech.

"That does sound like Holly," she remarked loosely, gazing lazily in Two-Bit's general direction. He ignored her.

"And man, were those cops sorry they booked us," he chortled. "Me 'nd Soda gave 'em hell."

Johnny grinned. They'd been hauled in for the night for doing back flips and minor things like that. Darry wasn't happy, ranting on about how there were people on the other side of town stabbing each other half to death and still the cops were off booking to kids for doing a couple of cartwheels. It had made Johnny feel a little guilty - even though he didn't want to do anything for his birthday, they wouldn't have gotten hauled in if it wasn't his birthday. Not that any of 'em really minded getting hauled in; it was just more hassle for Darry. And nothing that was hassle for Darry was good for any of them. It got Johnny thinking yet again that everything would be better if it wasn't his birthday. But he usually thought this by this time every year, it was nothing new.

This girl standing beside Two-Bit loitered, gently swaying on the spot with a soft, vague smile on her thin, pale lips. Her hair was very light brown and thin, it curled softly and fell to below her elbows. Her cheeks were hollow and her cheekbones were very prominent, making her look like a pixie or something. She was extremely pale and had soft, very light pearly green eyes set in a thin, heart shaped face.

She seemed oddly familiar, although Johnny was sure he had never seen this girl before. She sort of gave off the feeling of an old, lived-in soul. The look in her eye, it made her seem like an aged soul in a youthful body.

"What are ya lookin' for, kid?" Two-Bit jerked his head at her abruptly. She looked at him slowly.

"Oh, I was looking for Ponyboy," she smiled dazedly. "A reliable source told me that he was last seen with _you."_

"If that reliable source was _Sodapop, _then no, he wasn't," Two-Bit retorted. Johnny blinked, noticing how cold he was acting towards her. The girl pouted and shrugged her shoulders, and without another word she traipsed off in the direction she'd come from.

"Crazy chick," Two-Bit muttered. "I'll tell ya Johnny, I've met a few crazy birds in my time, but never a nut like _her."_

"Well, wha'sa matter with her?" Johnny mumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Two-Bit shrugged his shoulders. "She's just . . . different." Johnny blinked at Two-Bit. The rain was still battering hard and in the rare moment of silence Johnny had one thought: _I'm _different. He knew he was a little different. No one _else _got pitying looks as the walked down the hall, no one _else _was tiptoed around, no one _else _was 'kindly spared' from all parent talk, which had developed into a sudden silence when he walked in. Did everyone do that to him to? Shake their heads and mutter 'freak'? Laugh about it to their friends how _different _he was too?

Johnny stared after her. "What's her name? She looks sorta familiar."

Two-Bit frowned a little, glancing over his shoulder as he began walking in the opposite direction. Johnny followed him. "Uhh . . . I think it's Emma," Two-Bit said uncertainly. "Oh no wait. It's Doreen. That's it."

Johnny blinked. "She don't look like a Doreen."

Two-Bit shrugged. "Does it matter?" Johnny blinked and didn't reply. Two-Bit started walking, and Johnny fell into a step about a half behind him, glancing back over his shoulder at the girl's retreating figure one more time.

"What does she wanna talk to Ponyboy for?"

"Beats the hell outta me," Two-Bit grinned. "Probably wants to read his palm and cleanse his soul or something."

"Cleanse his soul," Johnny repeated to himself. Two-Bit didn't hear him. Seizing his opportunity, Two-Bit filled the weighty silence with his latest spiel on his late night encounters with some of Tulsa's most promising individuals, and Johnny listened, a certain reminiscent fondness curving his lips.

XXX

After sixteen years, Johnny had yet to decide whether or not he liked Fridays. It had always been somewhere in the middle. They could really go either way, to tell the truth.

After the last class on a Friday evening, Johnny decided to go around the Curtises' to see - Johnny knew Ponyboy liked going out on Friday and Saturday nights, since he was barely allowed step outside the front foor any other night. He was surprised to find that Two-Bit was already there, and Soda was home too, lying on the couch with his hand over his face. Two-Bit was sitting against the couch, looking up at him.

"No," Soda was just saying as he came in.

"Hey," Johnny hollered. "What you doin' here, Soda?"

"I live here," Soda said through his fingers.

"Don't you got work?" Johnny grinned at him.

Soda raised his head a little, and peeked through his fingers at Johnny. "Nah," he shrugged his shoulders. "One o' the guys is going somewhere tomorrow, so I said I'd take his shift for him."

"Y'know," Two-Bit said. "If you -"

"Two-Bit, for the last time, no!" Soda groaned.

"What's wrong?" Johnny sat down against the wall beside the TV, catching the lighter Two-Bit was throwing at him.

"Sandy and Soda have had a fight," Two-Bit was trying not to grin.

"Yeah, just a fight," Soda insisted. "Johnny, are you lookin' for Ponyboy?" Soda sat up on the couch, and raked his fingers through his hair.

"Is he around?"

Soda nodded. "In the shower. He won't be long." He got to his feet, stretched and yawned, and trudged his way to the kitchen. "You two stayin' for dinner?"

Johnny opened his mouth to answer, but Two-Bit got there first. "Naw man, I can't. I gotta date."

"With Louise?" Soda's grinning head appeared from around the doorway. Two-Bit nodded, but he was frowning. "I like Louise," Soda went on. "She's a nice girl." Johnny had never met Louise; all he knew was that she was blond and her name was Louise Howard, and her papa was awful strict with her.

"Yeah," Two-Bit agreed and cocked his head to the side. "I don't know man. I think I must have pissed her off or something."

"Wouldn't be hard," Soda snorted, and Johnny grinned. Two-Bit cocked one eyebrow, shaking his head, but said nothing, except for hollering goodbye when he was leaving.

"You stayin', Johnny?" Soda was looking at him expectantly, blinking. Johnny opened his mouth to answer, sbut was cut off by Ponyboy's emerging from the bathroom, clad in jeans and a t-shirt and his hair sopping wet.

"Yeah, I guess I'll stay," Johnny said to Soda, who was hovering waiting for an answer. "'S long as it ain't no trouble, Soda."

"Never is," Soda hollered, retreating to the kitchen. Ponyboy had dropped into the couch, his head buried in a book. Johnny could see drips from the end of his nose, falling onto the page and bleeding into the paper. Ponyboy looked completely transfixed, even though the ink had to be running from the steady drops seeping into it. He didn't seem to care though. And even though he looked completely captivated, he still replied when Soda asked him if he wanted chicken, and then inclined his head an inch towards where Johnny was lying across the couch.

"Johnny, ya wanna go to the movies tonight?" he asked.

"Sure," Johnny agreed without asking anything else. He knew Ponyboy would be sore if he said no, and most likely whine about it for the entire night - which they'd be together for anyway - and besides, it wasn't like Johnny had anything better to do.

Soda came traipsing in from the kitchen, and stopped over Ponyboy's shoulder, looking at the book. Johnny watched Ponyboy squirm uncomfortably and eventually turn around and shove Soda away from him. "Well, when the movie's over, me and Two-Bit are gonna be around somewhere," Soda said, throwing down Johnny's legs off the couch and sitting where his feet had just been. "Y'all can come over and meet us," he said, throwing his feet up on the coffee table.

"Yeah, alright," Ponyboy agreed, so vaguely that Johnny wasn't even sure he knew what he was agreeing to. Soda busied himself making dinner, occasionally coming in to sit down and watch the television. It was nice and warm inside, and there was some appealing smells wafting in from the kitchen. It was comfortable and the low murmur of the television was soothing. His eyelids were heavy. He felt drowsy. He could feel himself drifting . . .

* * *

Alright. I'm actually guaranteeting another update relatively soon. Any constructive criticism or critique is more than welcome. And, sorry if it's a little short . . . And please excuse any typos.


	3. Chapter 3

I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

Johnny jerked awake when he heard a door open, but he kept his eyes shut tight. He'd had such a nice dream, and it was so warm and cosy. He wasn't looking forward to letting that go.

"Hey Johnny, rise and shine," Darry's voice was like music to his ears once he heard it. Not that he talked about it much or anything, but he had a lot of admiration for Darry. Sure, everyone liked Darry, everyone respected Darry - but after Darry had given up going to school and basically put his own life on hold until Ponyboy could be finished college, Johnny had had a lot more respect for him. He didn't really comprehend how he could do it, but it kind of made Johnny wish he had his own younger sibling. He didn't know if he would be prepared to do what Darry did, but it would be real nice to have someone to do it for. Someone to really properly share everything with, without feeling like he was intruding on what had once been a perfect happy family.

"You stayin' for dinner, Johnny?" Darry asked him, collapsing into the nearest armchair with a tired groan.

"I already asked him that," Soda said pointedly, poking his head round the door. Darry blinked. "Yeah, he is," Soda grinned widely, and disappeared.

"How long is it gonna be, Soda?" Darry leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, eyes closed and frowning.

"Not long," Soda's voice was uncertain; he was looking back over his shoulder dubiously as he retreated once again from the kitchen very quickly, letting a dishtowel trail on the floor unceremoniously, just as Johnny's nostrils were greeted by a wonderfully strange and unpleasant smell, wafting suspiciously from the direction of the kitchen. "Me 'nd Steve are gonna go down to the strip, see what happens.

It took a few seconds for Johnny to understand what had brought that up; after a minute or two he realized that he had offered that as an explanation for dinner not taking too long. Soda had sat down by the time it had taken Johnny to work that out, in between Ponyboy, who was so deeply immersed in his book you could swear the tip of his nose was rubbing off the edge of the pages, and the arm of the chair, where there wasn't that much space.

"You wanna be careful down there," said Darry as Ponyboy wrinkled his nose and scooted over on the seat. "I heard that two guys down there got shot last weekend." Soda shrugged his shoulders, rolling his eyes cheerfully. "I know you can take care of yerself 'nd all," Darry continued, frowning deeply now, "But you can't be too careful anymore."

Soda wasn't having any of it though. He scowled and rolled his eyes, smirking cockily. "C'mon Dar," he grinned, leaning back in the couch and putting both hands behind his head. "I don't get in no trouble. You know me, ain't nothin' bad ever happens to me." He laughed, propping his feet up on the coffee table.

"Feet off the table," Darry scolded Soda, kicking the coffee table out of the reach of Soda's legs. Soda scowled, plonking his feet pointedly down on the floor. By now, Johnny was feeling like a fourth wheel more than ever. Not for the first time, he felt a familiar pang for something he didn't have. He knew he shouldn't - no one could choose the life they were given, no one could pick out the situation they were born into. No one had any right to envy anyone else. But at its best, jealousy is more powerful than logic.

After a few minutes - during which Soda had turned on the TV and was now proceeding to increase the volume at twenty second intervals, and Darry had gotten himself a beer and had sat back down tiredly, eyelids beginning to get a little heavier with exhaustion - Johnny watched Ponyboy sigh, slam his book - making Johnny and Darry jump - and place it carefully under the couch in the corner, so he would know where to find it, Johnny supposed. He presumed that Ponyboy was finding it hard to concentrate with Darry firing questions about school and homework and track, and volume of the TV increasing steadily.

"Ponyboy," Darry started slowly. Ponyboy inclined his head but didn't meet Darry's eyes.

"Yeah?"

"You wanna go outside and play some football before dinner?"

There was a pause. "Why?"

"Just wondering," Darry muttered.

"I can't play football on an empty stomach, Dar," Ponyboy scowled.

"Alright, alright," Darry threw up his hands in defense and shook his head. "It was only an idea."

"It's raining," Ponyboy drawled, looking annoyed.

"Oh," Darry glanced out the window, and then grimaced. "I guess it is." Johnny wrinkled his nose; he was beginning to like the rain. And who could blame him - it was either that, or move. And he didn't want to move. He never wanted to move. Ever. Sure, he didn't exactly want to stay either, but maybe if he could just wait until his parents had gone, he could stay. Either way, judging by the way things were going, he was going to have to get used to the rain.

Ponyboy, looking extremely irritated, got to his feet and Johnny could have sworn he saw him rolling his eyes. Soda stared after him, his expression concerned but also a little bitter, as he left, until Darry called his name and he - eventually looked back.

"Yeah?"

"I smell burning."

Soda sheepishly got to his feet and Ponyboy groaned loudly, opting to follow him into the kitchen. Darry and Johnny were left in the silence for a minute, until a small voice came from the kitchen: "Oops."

"Oh, Soda," Darry muttered. "One of these days, you're gonna get dinner right."

Johnny followed Darry to the kitchen, where Ponyboy was roaring with laughter and leaning against the kitchen counter for support, while Soda held the burnt food and suppressed a grin.

"Oh well," Soda shrugged his shoulders and grimaced at Darry, whose expression was a mixture of shock, amusement and exasperation. Ponyboy managed to compose himself eventually and turned to Johnny, still chuckling a little.

"Hey, Johnny, you wanna go now?" He inclined his head towards the blackened meal and wrinkled his nose. "We can always get food out somewhere. Might be safer."

Johnny laughed and Soda threw Ponyboy an indignant look, to which Ponyboy grimaced apologetically but still went to put on his jacket. Darry was looking at Ponyboy, his expression hard.

"Don't be out too late Ponyboy," he said vehemently. Ponyboy's face was blue murder.

"I _won't, _Dar, could you give it a rest?" he pouting, trudging past Soda and pushing past Johnny's shoulder in his haste to get out of there. Soda was shaking his head, and Darry was gazing around like he didn't know what he was meant to do.

"I'll see you guys," Johnny said, in a more little voice than he'd meant, and hurried after Ponyboy.

Walking to the movie house was the shortest walk of Johnny's life. Except for Dallas, he liked no one better than he liked Ponyboy. And when you considered how differently he adored the two, it was hard to compare them anyway. Ponyboy was smart, and sharp - to be honest, which, when dealing talking about himself, Johnny always tried to be, he was damn proud of Ponyboy, who was now spending the time expressing his fretting over his hair.

"And Soda's is always so perfect," he was saying, running his fingers through his light brown hair, shiny with grease. Ponyboy always complained about his hair being reddish - Johnny didn't see the red at all. "And it just seems so effortless," he went on, gazing wistfully into space as he said it.

Johnny grinned. "Why don'tcha ask him how he gets it so perfect then?"

Ponyboy shrugged. "Seems like a stupid question, dunn'it?"

"You don't _have _to have it like Soda has it," Johnny pointed out. The expression on Ponyboy's face was too quick a flicker for Johnny to catch what it really was - but he had a faint feeling that Ponyboy was being told something he didn't want to hear. He didn't have to have his hair the way Soda did his, but maybe he _wanted _to. He wanted to be like Soda, that much was obvious. But he wasn't. Johnny had the impression it annoyed him.

"I _know,_" Ponyboy said, reminding Johnny a little bit of a child who was being reminded something they didn't want to hear, like to brush their teeth before they went to bed or to eat their breakfast before they took one step outside the front door. "And I don't. But I'd like it to look as good as Soda's does."

Johnny shrugged, keeping the thought to himself that it would be a great day for Ponyboy if that ever happened. Then he chuckled. "Hey Ponyboy, what would you do if you had to cut yer hair off?"

"Cry," Ponyboy replied immediately, his hand jumping to the ends of his hair protectively, like he was afraid it was going to fall off or something. "Why would I have to cut it off anyway?"

Johnny gave a lazy twitch of his shoulders and jammed one hand in his jeans jacket pocket, feeling around for a quarter. "I don't know. Maybe you'll join the army."

"Me? The army?" Ponyboy repeated incredulously. "They make you cut your hair off?"

Johnny grinned. "So I've heard."

"Well then I ain't," said Ponyboy resolutely. "No way." Johnny couldn't help but grin. Ponyboy bald - it was admittedly funny. Ponyboy shuddered beside him. His eyes took a second to adjust to the dark light of the movie theatre, and he followed Ponyboy to their favourite spot in the second last row.

XXX

There was a gate. Johnny was certain there was a gate. He would have sworn on his life. It didn't really make sense. Evidently enough, it didn't fit in at all. A big giant iron gate the size of two storeys, so old that the black paint was peeling off. He was just walking past it - behind it he could see dark rain clouds and a gravelly path, but any other direction he looked in, there was no sign of rain. He wished he'd paid closer attention; the moment he looked around, it was gone. Like it was never there. Maybe he was going insane. But it had seemed so _real._ He had _felt _the wind that was blowing from that direction, felt a few stray droplets splash against his face.

But it didn't matter; when he looked back it wasn't there. And nothing he was going to do would conjure it back.

"Wow," Ponyboy said _yet again_, referring once more to the movie they'd just seen. "That'd be a great book." Johnny nodded, still distracted, gazing over his shoulder where that gate had been one second before.

"Why don't you read it?"

"Yeah . . ." Ponyboy trailed off. What followed was one of those rare moments between the two of them when it was completely quiet, and they were both completely immersed in their own thoughts. No doubt Ponyboy's mind was full of thoughts of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable - Johnny's on the other hand; it wasn't as easy to see.

"Hey look who it is," Ponyboy chirped, his voice brightening. Johnny was planets away, but he heard it. Looking around, he found Soda and Steve. Well, sort of. They were far away and talking to a group of three or four tall, tough-looking guys. Their eyebrows were furrowed, they were frowning. Something was wrong.

Ponyboy frowned too. "What's goin' on?" Johnny shrugged his head, wondering how in the name of God he was supposed to know. Ponyboy repeated the question to his older brother once they had gotten near enough and Soda turned to face them, looking worried and pained.

"You ain't seen Two-Bit, have ya?"

Johnny shook his head. "We've been at the movies."

"It was amazing, Soda -" Ponyboy started, but Soda cut across him.

"Not right now, Ponyboy, I'll hear about it later." Ponyboy looked a little hurt, to tell the truth. "So you definitely haven't seen 'im?"

Johnny shook his head once again, and Steve grimaced. "He probably just went to cool off," he said to Soda in a consoling voice. "He just went to get a beer, calm down a little. Why don't we call the house and see if he's there yet?"

"He's not," Soda shook his head. "I know he's not."

"You wanna fill us in?" Johnny said meekly.

Steve blinked. "We can't find Two-Bit," he said very slowly, like they were thick or something.

"We got that much." Ponyboy gritted his teeth. "What's the big deal? We've gone _days_ without finding him before."

Soda put one arm around Ponyboy's shoulder and gave him a little squeeze. "You didn't see him, kiddo. He was scary-lookin'. Crazy like."

"He's just gonna hurt himself or someone else," Steve said, his head in his hand. Johnny turned away - a little bitterly - from the brotherly scene, and gazed down the road as if he expected to see Two-Bit swaggering towards them, wearing a toothy grin. He wasn't.

"He seem mad or somethin'?" Ponyboy said from behind him.

"Alright, well I'm gonna go home and call the house," Steve said. "Since just _knowing _isn't really good enough." He rolled his eyes. "Comin' Johnny?"

"Yeah, alright," Johnny agreed, because he thought Ponyboy and Sodapop would want to go home. And it was only their home, no matter what they said. But Steve - his house wasn't really a home to him. Johnny guessed that's why he liked Steve a hell of a lot more than Ponyboy did. Ponyboy could barely stand him. In fairness to the kid, Steve acted like an asshole to him. Sure, he cared, but he didn't act like it. And Ponyboy really hated him. Probably just because he thought Steve hated _him. _Johnny knew Ponyboy; he wouldn't hate someone for no reason whatsoever.

So he bade a quick goodbye to Ponyboy and told them he'd see them later.

"If you ain't goin' home," Ponyboy said, in a quiet enough so that only Johnny heard. "You can come on by to my house." He smiled sympathetically.

"Thanks," Johnny muttered, managing a very strained smile. Why was he talking quietly? Did he think that no one else in the world except those two knew what went on when Johnny was at home? He never hid bruises, never made up excuses or lied about it. He just didn't want it being brought up all of the time. He was dealing with it. He could handle it.

And he didn't want no sympathy neither. He wasn't a little lost puppy. Sure, he was grateful that they would let him stay at their house, and he was more than thankful for their support. But there was a difference between looking out for your buddies and pitying them. Usually, they didn't want the latter.

"C'mon," Steve said gruffly. "It's gonna pour any second."

Johnny looked up at the sky, which was a violent, angry dark grey, fit to burst. Those rainclouds were all too familiar. There was something unsettling about the way they rubbed off each other and rumbled softly, threatening to open their gates and let out the flood they were holding back at any second.

"Yeah, alright," Johnny muttered, still gazing up at the sky with an unpleasant feeling in his stomach. He jammed his fists in his pocket and fell into step beside Steve.

Just as he had predicted, it began to rain when they were about halfway to Steve's house. Johnny pulled the back of his jacket over his head – uncomfortably – and Steve swore under his breath, speeding up a little.

Johnny could barely see anything, the rain was so thick and heavy. It was creating a cold fog and it had gotten much darker alarmingly fast. Johnny tried to keep his head down as they walked, but the rain was dripping off the tip of his nose and seeping into his greasy hair. That was dripping too, and since he was holding his jacket up over his head from the back to prevent exactly that from happening, the soakage from his hair was seeping into his shirt.

Concentrating instead on not slipping in his worn out Converse, Johnny watched the rain pellets exploding on the ground and wondered what Two-Bit was doing, whether or not he was out in this downpour.

He was just getting to that thought when the sirens blasted and at least two cop cars zoomed past them in the opposite direction. The siren lights were blaring and their headlights were blinding.

When Steve looked at Johnny, Johnny knew that the same thought was running through both their minds.

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Fanfiction seems to be eating my space bar lately... Reviews or critiques of any kind are appreciated. Flame if you must. Just don't do it badly.


	4. Chapter 4

I don't own the Outsiders.

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"What'll we do?" Johnny said to Steve. He felt like his stomach had been twisted, turned upside down and wrung. It was an odd, sudden sort of lurch, a jerky ominous intuition in the pit of his stomach that that something was about to go horribly wrong, or something bad was about to happen. Or had already happened maybe.

He would have bet all the hair grease in the world that, although Steve's face was as calm and almost remotely expressionless as it usually was, he was getting the same feeling.

From the way Steve talked, nobody really knew why Two-Bit had flipped out. Some bad news, obviously. But from the impression Steve was making, Johnny was half expecting to find that Two-Bit had murdered someone or something.

"Don't know," Steve shrugged. "I can't hear nothin' no more." He was right. It was true – terrifyingly true – it was quiet. The sirens that most of Johnny's friends had come to recognize as the signal to scarper had just about faded away in the distance. Either that, or they were where they needed to be. Wherever that was. It was unbearably quiet, except for the pelting of the rain attacking the pavement. And neither of them seemed to really care about the rain anymore, or how it was screwing with their hair.

"I think we should go to Ponyboy's," Johnny said. "He'll be there soon enough." What else were they supposed to do? They couldn't go to Two-Bit's, which was closer, because he obviously wasn't there, and Steve really didn't like Two-Bit's sister anyway. They had no idea if Dally was even around, let alone if he knew what was going on. But the Curtises – they were always countable on to be there.

"He won't know what's going on."

"He might."

"Sodapop probably told Ponyboy to go home."

"Yeah but he ain't gonna stay at home."

"Course he will, he adores Soda."

Johnny wrinkled his nose. "We still should. Darry'll know what's up." After looking at Johnny for a long time, with a hard, unreadable expression, Steve seemed to decided that maybe going to the Curtises' house was the best thing to do. After all, all news went through the Curtis house. "And if he don't, Ponyboy will find out, won't he?" Johnny added, just to push it home.

"Yeah, alright," Steve said resignedly, letting out a passive sigh. He raked his fingers through his hair and the two of them headed for Ponyboy's house. The rain was beginning to ease off - it was considerably quieter now. Still, it wasn't as eerie now. Maybe it was just that they had some purpose or sense of direction or something. Now that there was a plan - not a good one, but one all the same - securely in his head, it was sort of calming. Maybe it was more of a feeling of security, or even just sense. But Johnny thought it helped. Even just a little bit.

The walk to Ponyboy's was the longest he'd had in a long while - and that sure was saying a lot. He had long, dragging on walks when there was no one to walk beside him. When he walked alone, he was alone. Alone with his thoughts. Usually, he didn't feel as alone as he did when he walked alone - because he'd never been more lonely than those times - but Steve didn't really help. Steve . . . You just couldn't talk to Steve like you could talk to Ponyboy, or maybe even Darry. Darry was a good listener. Steve was fine to talk to, but usually it didn't mean much to either of them.

It didn't really matter anyway, since Steve was keeping his mouth shut. Johnny supposed he was pretty much absolved in his own thoughts at the moment. Johnny could understand that; it had happened to him often enough. And Lord knows he had a lot to be thinking of right then. When finally they arrived at the Curtises' house, Darry was at home having some food. Ponyboy was there too, sitting on the couch and looking annoyed.

"We found 'im," said Ponyboy, the moment Johnny opened the door cautiously. Johnny relaxed a little bit and walked to the nearest chair and sunk into it, hauling his legs up over the armrest.

"Well where is he?" Steve on the other hand, leaned against the wall and assumed the calm leaning position against it.

"He ain't here," Ponyboy drawled.

"No kidding," Steve shot back, glaring. "Where is he then?" Johnny wrinkled his nose, seeing the two of them getting more annoyed. They didn't hate each other or anything. But they just rubbed off each other the wrong way. He could see both sides.

"Last I saw, Dally had a hold of 'im and Soda was pushing me in the opposite direction." Ponyboy looked around, his brow furrowed.

Darry shook his head. "Idiot," he muttered.

"Me?" Ponyboy whipped around with a wide grin on his face, feigning his indignation.

Darry cracked a grin too and shook his head. "Nah, not you. Two-Bit. One more thing is gonna drive him right over the edge." It was strange to think that it was Two-Bit they were talking about. Two-Bit, untouchable Two-Bit who never let anything get to him and always had a joke on the tip of his tongue and a silly grin on his face. By the look on their faces, there wasn't much of a general idea about what Darry was talking about. Two-Bit just wasn't a worrier.

Johnny and Ponyboy exchanged a glance, but that was when Darry stood up, kicked his chair back in and cleared up his dishes. Then he retreated to his bedroom, so they couldn't ask him what he was talking about. Johnny got the feeling that Darry wouldn't have said anything anyway.

Johnny opened his mouth to say this to Ponyboy, who was staring after Darry with a defiant expression, like he was going to ask questions, but he was interrupted by Soda shuffling in with his hands jammed in his pockets, and looking thoroughly confused.

"Two-Bit here yet?"

"I don't see him," Steve muttered through the cigarette he had held between his lips. "Do you?"

"Very funny, smartie." Sodapop pretended to laugh while he kicked off his shoes.

"What happened?" Johnny asked, watching Sodapop's jacket triumphantly fall off the couch thanks to Soda's aim.

Soda shrugged his shoulders. His body language and his expression said it wasn't a big deal, but Johnny saw him glance in Ponyboy's direction. Maybe that had something to do with it. It might be a big deal after all - but God forbid they let the kids worry about it. "Nothin' really. He got in a fight or somethin' like that - nothing major."

Johnny raised his eyebrows. "What was all the hassle for?"

Here he was, thinking this over. He found it highly doubtful that he'd fallen asleep, or something, because he didn't have any collection

"Not sure," Soda muttered dubiously.

"What was the fight about?" Steve flicked his ashes in Soda's direction. Soda shrugged his shoulders again.

"Look, I don't know what was goin' on. Dally told me that he'd take care of it."

That seemed to put the conversation to bed, and Steve and Ponyboy seemed a lot more relaxed by this latest piece of information. Johnny was too, because he knew that Dally could handle anything the world had to throw at him, and that he _would _take care of it. But a little part of him was still scared. Maybe he didn't want Dally thrown back in the slammer again or something. Not that that would stop Dally or anything. Sometimes Johnny thought that Dally actually _liked _getting arrested and shoved in the cooler for a few weeks.

Now that he thought about it, it almost seemed as if Dally did. He had a guarantee of a roof over his head, a guarantee of some food, and a guarantee of a place to sleep at night. Now, Johnny didn't think that Dallas Winston would have any problem getting these things for himself. But he'd always thought that if you knew you had them, it would make you feel safer. No matter who you were, or where you lived, or where you slept - once you could say you had it, everything just seemed more doable.

Maybe that was why he stayed at home. The guys had talked to him a few times about leaving, coming to live with one of them. When their parents had been alive, the Curtises had been sure that they wouldn't mind taking Johnny in. Two-Bit enthused over his sister, Holly, taking care of Johnny. Steve probably wouldn't have minded the company.

But Johnny refused. Not only could he not do that to his friends, but he also didn't want to. He needed to fix his own problems. If they could be fixed.

Come to think of it, if _Dally _had said to Johnny to come away and live with _him - _well, Johnny thought that he most likely would have done it. But Dally didn't have a home like that, and he didn't want that sort of burden over his head. Even for Johnny. You can't ask someone to live with you if you don't live _anywhere. _And Buck . . . Johnny didn't like Buck. He wouldn't have stayed there. No way, no how. But he did hope that Dally never asked him to.

But Dally got annoyed easily, and Buck was easy to get annoyed at, to tell you the truth. It was making more and more sense in his head that Dally got arrested _deliberately. _Did he not realize that Johnny hated when he was in the cooler? Everything seemed better when Dally wasn't around. That probably wasn't the case, and it most likely was in his head - but in his head was where it was important.

Johnny felt himself emerging from his reverie; the voices of Soda and Steve were becoming less hazy, and now he could feel Ponyboy's eyes on him. He was about to say that he had to go, go home to where his parents were waiting for him - because, really, he never stopped hoping.

That's when Dally burst in, dragging Two-Bit in hysterics by the scruff of his neck, and muttering furiously to himself.

"Howdy," Sodapop said cheerfully, grinning bemusedly at Two-Bit, who was quietening down.

Steve glanced at Soda, looking torn between laughing at his best friend and being annoyed at his best friend.

"How ya doin' Johnny, you alright?" Dally had sauntered over to where Johnny was sitting and sat down artfully on the armrest. Johnny was used to this sort of greeting from Dally, who liked to make sure that he was okay, and so his nod was systematic. Then Dally 'borrowed' one of Johnny's cigarettes.

"Wha's goin' on, Two-Bit?" Ponyboy said cautiously, his expression getting more and more anxious. Two-Bit had brandished a beer out of nowhere, it seemed, and was now quietly sipping away on it. He looked entirely immersed in his own thoughts, which isn't a sight for sore eyes, to say the least. It didn't happen much.

"Nothin' much, kid," Two-Bit muttered. "Got lots to do . . ."

They were every one of them bewildered by this reaction, and turned their expectant eyes to Dally, who shrugged.

"I don't know what to tell ya," he said articulately. "We all get stupid sometimes," he explained, leaning forward and hitting Two-Bit over the back of his head playfully on the word 'stupid'.

Steve had his eyebrows raised sceptically, but said nothing; Soda was gladly ignoring the prospect that something could be going wrong. Something Johnny could never ignore like Soda did. After all, Two-Bit began to act more like himself after a little while, and each of them could feel each other relaxing into their seats at ease, relieved.

"Man, I gotta go," Johnny blurted out. He had jumped to his feet, the sentence so ready on the tip of his tongue that it was like a stranger had spoken, or at least stolen in and placed it on his tongue. Perplexed expressions faced him. "My ol' man is gonna hit the roof if I wake him up again." If he was even there.

He saw Dally's lips grow thinner, and their expressions grow darker, but he pretended that he did not. He left in an awful hurry then.

XXX

The concrete of the sidewalk was wet from the rain, and it glistened in the still moonlight. Johnny almost felt guilty walking across the smooth slabs of stone, quietly laying there and not disturbing anyone. The breeze was low, and the trees swayed softly. Leaves rustled gently against one another.

Lights of a warm, inviting gold were lit off in the distance. They blended with the silver stars up ahead against the dark backdrop of the sky, which was a deep and warm navy-blue. He could hear cars from somewhere but he couldn't see any. It was hard to see - the trees casted a shade where the moon would shine, and he would have to peer through the darkness.

The ground beneath his feet changed when he turned a corner. It was as radical as if he'd stepped off a harbour into the immaterial of water, but of course he hadn't. The houses, the neighbourhood, the lights were gone. Instead, there was now a dirt path beneath his feet, and wild bushes clawing and tangling around each other on either side, wildly festering into his path. He looked behind him, but the same was only that way.

This didn't look like Tulsa. At all.

For some strange reason, Johnny thought of that movie, The Wizard of Oz, or something like that. That girl, the one with the dog, she'd ended up in a strange place that didn't look like anything like her hometown. It was all colourful and new, but there was this witch chasing her around the place looking for her shoes. Jeez, the things broads will do for a pair of shoes. He didn't remember ever seeing that movie properly, he just remembered it. So strange that he would think of it now. Sure there was no green-skinned creature following him around, but _he _wasn't about to click his heels together to get home. No way.

If he'd been her, he would have stayed where he was, with all those tiny people.

That's when he saw it. It would have been terribly more impressive to say that, once his eyes fell upon it, the sky lit up with a terrifying flash of lighting, and the thunder rumbled overhead in a most foreboding manner. That it bucketed from the heavens, and the moon shone brightly in the background, glowing a strange, unnatural colour to add to the ominous manner of it all.

But that did not happen. When he saw a gate that was all too familiar, there was no roll of thunder. No lightning streaked the sky. The sky remained undisturbed in its blissful slumber. The only sound was a bird, twittering in a way that seemed almost inviting. In fact, on the contrary, the entire scene seemed a little sweet.

He didn't move though. He wasn't stupid, contrary to popular belief. It was all the same, stupid people opened closets or went back into the haunted house or something. No, he didn't move. It was a strange thought to think, but it struck his mind that it would be nice to just stay here. Sure, he'd miss Dal and he'd miss Ponyboy, but he could just stay right where he was. It seemed a place so free of worry. So effortlessless, it seemed.

Wait, was he dead?

No the thought was dismissed almost as soon as he had thought it. He would _know _if he was dead, wouldn't he? You know when you die, don't you?

Well, if he wasn't dead, where the hell was he?

He decided, as he stood there thinking about it, that he wasn't dreaming, since he had no recollection of coming home or getting to bed, and the chances of him falling asleep outside, when he had been walking along not five minutes ago, were low. He also doubted that he had been knocked out, because surely if someone had hit him hard enough to knock him out, then he would have felt it. It would have hurt.

The only logical thing he could think of was that he hadn't been paying attention to where he was going - which was true, and he rarely did - and he had simply taken a wrong turn. He didn't know where a wrong turn such as _this _one in Tulsa, but he could think of nothing else. He didn't know of any place like that, with wild flowers and bushes yellowing on their branches and obscuring the pathway from his sight. This conclusion dawned on him, and he preoccupied himself with trying to think that he needed to get back on the path he'd been, while the back of his mind focused on the sound of movement he could hear behind him.

He wasn't paying attention to it. Maybe if he had been, things would have been different.

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Feedback would be appreciated; I'm a little worried about this chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

Oops...

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Even with his eyes closed, Johnny felt the pavement slip under his feet once again as if by magic. He knew long before he opened his eyes that he would open them to the same cracked pavement, gleaming with a shiny coat of the rain. Quicker than lightning, he had felt his feet fall comfortably onto the solid concrete, and when he opened his eyes, there he stood.

That was when it struck him that he was either letting his imagination run away with him, or he was going insane. Almost every teacher he had told him that he didn't have an imagination, so somehow the thought of it being his imagination was meekly brushed to one side as something that he was not lucky enough for it to be true.

Then again, insanity. He always said that he would go insane if he had to go through the same monotonous routine day after day . . . But that was just talk, a turn of phrase. And a person didn't know when they had gone mental. The crazy ones are always the ones that think they're the sanest of the bunch. Like Sodapop. Sort of.

Because he was busy pondering whether he was overly imaginative or just plain crazy, it struck him that he was standing outside the front door of his house. Not his home, his house. The place where he lived with his parents. Not his home. The window didn't have curtains to be drawn across it, and if you were on the inside, it stuck out from the dingy wall as a rectangle of clear crystal, of light and something bright glowing in your stomach. So he could see into the front room with no problem, and he could see even from here how much the window stood out from the outside too. It was the only thing in their house that wasn't broken. Funny, since it was probably the easiest thing to break.

There was a lamp on, but it was either cracked or running out, because it flickered on and off, flickered like his insides did when he looked at the place. How well it fit in with the dismal scene was a sad commentary even of itself.

Still, what he had just experienced - whatever it was - had given him a certain sense of mystery and he would admit only to himself that he was scared. It was that fear that pushed his feet forward a step or two, as he gazed intently at this house, this make-believe home. He didn't know how long he had been standing there, staggering forward a step every so often, when he heard another pair of footsteps. These weren't like his own - laboured and dragged, trudging their way along the concrete - they were light and delicate and suddenly the image of a frail swan meekly finding its way through the water burst to his mind. Needless to say, when he looked, it wasn't a swan that was following him or anything.

Now Johnny's teachers had always said he was slow, and this was one of those moments that made him think that maybe they knew what they were talking about. He knew her; he knew that tangled mess of very light brown curls. It looked like more of a mane to Johnny, from the rain maybe.

She was looking at him accusingly, her pale lips scrunched to one side like she was annoying.

"I know you," she said. Johnny had planned to say nothing. He nodded. "Something Cade. Walter's son." Johnny winced. Yes, he was Walter's son alright.

"Johnny," he told her, already bored of the conversation. Two-Bit had told him what her name was. "Doreen right?"

"Doreen?" She looked shocked. "No not at all. My name's Emma." She smiled at him, a look that he was well familiar with it. He could see the pity. She pitied him; maybe she thought he was slow for not knowing her real name. Two-Bit. Why would he be surprised? "You live in here?" she asked him. She was looking at the house, falling down and with a flickering lamp.

"Yes."

She blanked. More pity. Pity from his friends was one thing; pity from a stranger . . . Well, he didn't know which was worse.

"Well, it's . . ."

"I know." He decided to spare her. She threw him a weak smile, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. Something caught his eye on her wrist.

"Is that . . . Is that a scar?" he asked her. He didn't know what made him say that. He knew he'd sure hate it for someone to gawk at him and ask him "Is that a bruise?" the next time his father socked him one.

"I suppose it is," muttered Emma, looking down at her hand dubiously, as if she didn't know. "But it's a long story . . . And it's sort of chilly out here. I'll tell ya about it some other time." He blinked. "Promise," she added. Without another word she slipped into the garden of the house next to Johnny and delicately hopped over the fence. She let herself in the back door of a house that was just opposite Johnny's, separated by two gardens. The light went on inside. It didn't flicker.

And then he forgot about her, and went inside.

And the moment he did. He regretted it. The door shut behind him, and the flickering light burned out, as if it knew he was home, and didn't want to be around for what was about to happen. And if Johnny knew it was about to happen, he would have taken the light's advice and scarpered. It was like a warning, an ominous sign. But he was tired and confused from the day's antics, so he just put it down to something else in his life breaking.

"You're late." Johnny almost jumped out of his skin.

"I - I am?" he stuttered, veering forward. His mother was down on her knees, scrubbing at a stain on the floor.

"You're more trouble than you're worth," his father snorted from where he sat on the couch, eyes glued to the TV screen and beer bottle at hand. "With all the worryin' we be doin' over ya." His mother, holding an apron back over her knees and pushing back her sweat-drenched hair, scrubbed and scratched at the stain even more furiously.

"Did you even know I was gone?" Johnny could have kicked himself - he really said that out loud, didn't he? And from the look he was getting from his father, he was thinking the same thing.

"This is my house," Johnny's father said articulately, staring Johnny right in the eye.

"Oh I give up," his mother screeched, cutting off her husband before he ripped into Johnny. "You, you little shit," she said as she scrambled to her feet and pointed one accusing, brittle finger at Johnny. Even he towered over her, and she stared up at him with beady eyes. "You just live to make our lives more difficult." Johnny blinked. "Do you know how long I've been slaving over that floor?" she screamed. "That floor that I work so _damn _hard to keep clean? Two hours!" she roared, looking as if she would throw something at him. He didn't move. "And you - _you _just can't keep your dirty little hands to yourself!"

Johnny looked at the floor. The stain was smudged, quite large and nondescript.

"That's a burn!" She pointed at the floor and roared again, stepping around the sofa. "From one of your cigarettes! And over here," she moved the curtain aside, "A beer stain."

"The kid's been at my beer?" Suddenly Johnny's father was upright in his seat and gaping at his wife. The television wasn't _that _captivating.

"Well, _someone _had to be," she snapped, "And it wasn't me." She was yelling in that way that would make a person think she was close to sobbing, which she most likely was. That really coarse, emotive yelling. Like she really, really meant it. When his mother yelled, she had a way of making Johnny feel guilty. He knew it wasn't really his fault, but she still managed to make him feel like it was. He couldn't explain that.

"That kid," she muttered. "He comes waltzing in here and lives under our roof, and eats our food and takes _our _stuff, and walks around like he owns the place!"

Johnny knew by knew that fear was a stupid thing to waste one's time on. It fooled you, got the better of you, turned you into an idiot, and made you do the most terrible things. But that fear was creeping back, he could feel it. Before he knew it, his father was on his feet and roaring at him. And the rest was a blur. As usual.

XXX

The actual thing may only have been heard in neighbouring houses and passing people walking their dogs, but the echo that the shattered glass created spread like wild fire. And the whole city knew about it just like that. Johnny first heard about it when he went to meet Ponyboy at the corner of their street on the Sunday after his birthday.

"Man, have you heard what happened to Dally?"

They hadn't even taken a step; he'd only barely reached Ponyboy, and he was looking at Johnny quizzically, like he was concerned.

"No," Johnny said shortly, trying to get Ponyboy to walk in the direction of the lot without saying anything. "Why, what he do now?"

"Well, I don't know what's wrong with Two-Bit," Ponyboy started dubiously. "But y'know how he hates the school's principal."

"He should," Johnny grinned. "He spends enough time in his office."

"Yeah well, Two-Bit broke the windows in the school last night," Ponyboy said grimly.

"You're kidding!"

Ponyboy shook his head. "Yeah, and Dally took the fall for it."

"He - he what?" Johnny doubled up, not quite sure he'd heard Ponyboy right.

"Yeah," Ponyboy nodded his head vigorously. "He let 'em arrest _him_ instead of Two-Bit."

"B-but why?" Johnny liked Two-Bit as much as the next guy, but he was silently cursing Dally. Why couldn't Dally leave it alone for a little while? Two-Bit did it, he could have taken the fall for it. And Dallas may have managed to keep out of the cooler for another week or two. Johnny wouldn't have done the same thing, he thought. Would Dallas really do that for a friend?

"Well, it woulda broken Two-Bit's Ma's heart if he got caught doin' somethin' like that," Ponyboy shrugged.

"Yeah it would." Johnny sighed. "That was real brave of Dallas. Real good of him."

Ponyboy laughed. "Yeah, he's a proper angel alright."

Johnny wanted to persist, to tell him that it was no joke. Dallas was braver than any of them, and sometimes his causes were for better than anything they did. Johnny didn't know how he knew that Dally wasn't doing it to end up in the slammer again just for kicks, because he loved it so much - even though he probably did. He did it 'cause Two-Bit's Ma would be crushed. And Dally would rather take the fall. It would mean so much more to Two-Bit. Dallas didn't want to see Two-Bit unhappy. With a sickening jolt, Johnny realized that there was no one's heart that would break over Dallas getting arrested, no one but the gang.

Two-Bit, he had a kid sister and a Ma at home, a girlfriend and a big crowd. Who did Dally have? Not that anyway. And who did Johnny have? Not that either. They were really alike, him and Dally. He wasn't in a dark place though, or at least it didn't seem like it. It was strange. All it seemed like was that he didn't care. That it really didn't bother him. Johnny didn't understand that. When you're left with nothing, all you do is speculate. And then become a master of speculating yourself into the deepest darkest place possible. Maybe that was one of the reasons Johnny liked him so much. He had been dealt a rough hand, just like Johnny had. And he was doing just fine. He was getting through life, he was managing. He was someone that Johnny needed to be like, if he was going to get through the same things that Dally had. Like a role model, Dallas was someone that Johnny needed to _get _like. Maybe just, not one who broke the law for the fun of it so much. That wasn't really Johnny's scene.

He let the subject drop anyway. Ponyboy didn't like Dallas _extremely. _Sodapop liked Dally a helluva lot, because he was always fun to be around when he wasn't in a dangerous mood, and Soda liked anything that was exciting. Ponyboy, he was a little more reserved. Liked to think a little more than Sodapop, liked to be a little more formed in his opinions. Sodapop just breezed through life - happily. Another thing that Johnny could have done, could have tried. But the thought of that just seemed out of place to him, so he perished it at the root.

They'd reached the lot. Soda was working late, picking up an extra shift any time he could, but Steve was hangin' around the lot with some of the guys from around the town. Johnny didn't really make it his business to know that many people outside his own gang, so he didn't recognize most of them, and the ones he did, he wasn't sure of their names.

He was sure they knew him though. The Cade kid, who got beat around by his folks and wouldn't say boo to a fly. Didn't bother him though. Would take a lot more than that to bother him at this stage. He followed Ponyboy, who glowered at Steve as he passed. Johnny rolled his eyes. Ponyboy needed to grow up when it came to Steve.

He saw Dally's girl Sylvia across the way, pouting. He pitied her, much like the way he pitied himself, left without Dally, and Dally seeming as if he couldn't care less who he left alone. Yes, he pitied her, but not much.

XXX

It was late, and by the time Johnny was as ready to go home as he would ever be, it was bordering on too late to go home without causing a war. It was risky. Ponyboy had already told him that he could stay at his house, but Johnny wasn't decided yet. There was something that made him feel like he wanted to go home tonight. He didn't know why.

Before he knew it, he'd decided, and he ambled home alone.

At the back of his house was another house, separated by two shabby, badly kept gardens and a falling down fence. As he walked home a door slammed from that house, and a figure ran out. Pages scattered around the figure and blew in the wind. The person was crying; Johnny could hear quiet sobbing.

A light switched off inside the house. The figure looked like it was trying to collect the scattered pages. He hurried inside, not knowing whether or not this was his place.

He was lucky that night. His parents didn't notice him. How sad that that was his definition of lucky.

It was the next morning when he first set foot outside his door that he realized there was something at work, some force in the world. Something bigger than just him and his life. At his feet, smudged and drenched, was a drawing. He picked it up tenderly, careful not to rip it. It was frail and light. And the drawing was dark, like someone had dragged the pencil across each mark made a thousand times over. It was an iron gate, surrounded by twisting tendrils of trees and leaves. In the middle was an ornate 'SL'.

Johnny recognized the gate immediately. How could he not? It was sickeningly familiar. He felt a panic rising, and he knew he'd have to find whoever drew this. This was bigger than him, it had to be. This gate, and this drawing - they weren't a coincidence. He needed to find out who drew the drawing. It _meant _something now. He just didn't know what yet. But he would.

* * *

Still don't own The Outsiders!


	6. Chapter 6

One day, I'll have regular updates. This one will be short, by the way!

* * *

There was something to be said about the constant feeling of dread, dogging you at every corner. It sure was persistent. Johnny found he was always dreading something. Dreading running into his parents, his friends' faces when they saw _his, _getting stared at and whispered about because of some stupid scar, or some infamous and extremely public fight between that poor kid's parents. You got sick of dreading everything.

On his way to school on a dry but cold Wednesday morning, Johnny had a lot to dread. The stares and whispers, he had learned to manage - but he always felt like shit whenever he had homework to be done, or a test to be taken. But when your choice was getting detention for no homework and failing a couple of tests, or staying home all day with his mom, he'd rather just flunk the damn tests. Even those he could manage. Today was one of those rare days where his primary focus was the fact that some people cared about him, and not the exact opposite. And today he was dreading seeing the expressions of those people who cared about him. He did not want to witness their reaction when they got a good look at him.

Almost directly perpendicular to his eye, a thick and deep slit ran over his eye, an inch wide and starting to turn yellow. Sometimes it bled afresh and there was nothing he could do to stop it. That eye was red and puffy, and would barely open. The other was black and blue, but thankfully not swollen, and still fully functioning. There was also a small cut just between his nose and his mouth, where a shard of a smashed beer bottle had sunk and settled.

This was his father's work. A sea of blood-stained tissues and towels cluttered his bedroom floor. His pillow case was just a mass of red. He couldn't sleep face down without waking up in the morning, fresh blood, fresh pain. Some wounds just would not heal.

There was also a small enough blood stain on the living room carpet. He'd been out cold for two hours once his father was finished with him.

He didn't know why he was going to school. Usually, when this happened, he wouldn't be seen in daylight for the next two weeks. But he couldn't hide in his own house. The only place he could hide was behind the concerned looks of his friends, their angry hot-headed words, and livid attitudes. Perhaps this time, he knew he needed them and needed them now, needed their comfort - rather than suffering for two weeks all by his lonesome and then realizing that he needed them to comfort him, to make it seem like there was a patch of light in this constant grey sky.

A long, long time he'd felt like this. He talked to the guys, but when he tried to tell them how he felt, he knew they didn't understand. They would never know this feeling of hopelessness, of finding yourself in the position where there was no way out and no escape, and every corner you turned just seemed to screw you over twice as bad as the last one.

He had only ever touched on the subject once with Dally, the one person who Johnny thought might understand what he meant. Dallas had simply told him that if there was no way out you had to crawl out, you had to make yourself a way, you had to fight for it. You had to use what strengths you had and push as hard as you could until you got there. And once you got there, you stayed there.

But you couldn't fight and scratch and punch and kick with all your might forever. What was he meant to do when he, and all his strengths, had been completely exhausted to the point where he felt that if he didn't lie down on the floor and try to breathe, his insides would burst?

The strength he had was in his friends. He couldn't ask for better friends, better strength. But they couldn't hold him forever. He'd have to stand on his own two feet.

A lot of the time, Johnny ended up just wondering why. While they were alive, he had looked at Ponyboy's parents, who always were so kind, and so happy; he looked at Two-Bit's mama, who had been dealt a few rough hands in her time, but still seemed so happy. Sure, there was Steve's dad. But he was a real nice guy, once. Johnny didn't know what had happened there, and none of the gang really saw enough of Steve's Dad to know what was going on, or how he acted around Steve. Sure, he kicked Steve out every other week, but he took him back didn't he? Gave him a few bucks for his own pocket? Showed _some _remorse?

It just led to one question, all of it - what made his parents the way they were? What had happened to them, to make them so angry at the world, so twisted in their own little lives that they couldn't see what they were doing, the hurt they were inflicting, the damage they were causing?

He could ask the question a million times - but no one could answer him. What had he done? There were no answers - none that anyone could give him. And still, he couldn't give up looking for them. No matter how many times he came up blank. Which was all the time.

Thoughts like this always got to him the most while he walked to school, alone, hood up, waiting to be bothered. He got pretty far this time - he got all the way into the school, before chaos might as well have broken loose.

"What the fuck happened to your face?"

"Jeez, Steve," Johnny said in a small, reproachful voice. "Be a pal, and keep it down, will ya?"

"Oh he wants me to keep it down, the kid wants me to keep it down," Steve muttered.

"Alright, Randle, alright, just cool your boots," came Two-Bit's voice, taut with strain and what was clearly repressed rage. "Let 'im talk."

"It was your ol' man, wasn't it?" Steve said quickly, not one for "letting him talk".

"Steve man, you're gettin' all worked up over nothin'," Johnny croaked. "It's nothin'. Nothin'. I'm fine see?"

That's when he noticed Ponyboy, just standing there, his mouth open slightly. He looked plain horrified. "C'mon Ponykid," Johnny grinned softly, half-heartedly. "It ain't nothin' to be worried about."

"Hey now, like Hell it is," Two-Bit interjected, evidently coming over to Steve's side - Steve was fuming so bad he was pacing back and forth, just letting out a stream of cuss words and angry death wishes. "I know - Hell, we all know you're a tough kid, Johnny," Two-Bit went on. "But I ain't gonna stand here and let you say that what's up with you right now ain't somethin' to be worried about. I ain't ever seen you lookin' so bad, man."

"Yeah, so tell us what the hell happened," Steve said in a tight voice.

"Alright, it was my Pop," Johnny admitted. "I don't know why, he was just madder that usual. And like usual, he decides he'll take it out on me. Nothin' special."

Steve covered his mouth with his hand. His face was completely drained of colour. He could barely stand still, he looked like he was just itching to punch something.

"This can't keep happenin', Johnny," he said. "It can't go on like this. This has gotta stop, one way or another, it's gotta stop," he told Johnny, fumbling at a pack of cigarettes.

"Alright, cool it man, cool it," Two-Bit said, clapping Steve's shoulder, trying to steady him.

"How do you stand this Johnny?" said Steve, looking a little sad now. Ponyboy still hadn't said anything. "How do you keep doin' this?"

Johnny shrugged. "I been through worse."

Two-Bit cleared his throat. "Well that's just it, kid, I don't think you have. We ain't ever seen you this bad."

What was he supposed to say? That whenever he got banged up _this _bad, he just waited it out in his room and refused to come out for weeks at a time, so by the time they saw him, it wasn't half as bad as it had been - and they still thought it was pretty darn bad. Steve would flip worse than he was now.

He looked up at Steve, who was just about ready to kill. He was shaking his head. "You wait 'til Dallas hears about his, just wait until Dally finds about this," he kept saying. "He's gonna go apeshit."

Johnny let him get it all out, quietly thinking to himself about how Dally really would react. Sure, he'd be mad. But he'd keep his cool. He always kept his cool. Sure, he'd probably console Johnny a lot better than Two-Bit and Steve were doing now - sure, they were really helping him out and it was real clear that they cared a lot, but he wasn't sure that that's what he needed to hear right now - and Dally would be able to just tell him it was alright, and this was only gonna make him stronger. Then Dally would tell him he was one tough kid, and it would almost feel like it was worth it. Dally would just make it all go away. But he'd keep his cool.

Steve had switched to Soda now. "And you just wait until Soda sees you, man he's gonna go crazy. You just wait until I tell Soda about this, Soda won't sleep -"

They had started walking, and Johnny fell into step behind them, beside Ponyboy.

Ponyboy looked at him for a long time, and then very slowly just said, "You got banged up pretty bad, huh, Johnny?"

It was a pretty obvious thing to say. "Hell, Ponyboy," Johnny said with a gentle smile. "I been through worse. And when I got you guys here, it don't seem half as bad."

Ponyboy just looked sad. Not worried, not angry, not concerned. Just sad.

"Man, Johnnycake, I don't get why this happens to you." Johnny said nothing. "If I could stop it, I would."

* * *

Still don't own The Outsiders! And yes, I really really suck at updating. Sorry. Review?


	7. Chapter 7

Don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

Steve tried to force Johnny to come by the Curtises' straight after school, but by that time, Johnny's uplifting and comfort had evaporated, and he felt more weighed down than he had all day. It was saying something, but all he wanted to was shuffle home and collapse on his bed and hope he didn't bleed to death while he slept.

Ponyboy had been considerably quiet all day - sure he was a quiet kid, always off in a cloud somewhere, but never this quiet. Or rather, never this _kind _of quiet. He was quiet like he didn't know what to say. He asked Johnny if he wanted him to walk home with him. Johnny refused. He just wanted to be alone.

By the time he was near home, he regretted it. He forgot that he should never be left alone with his thoughts. He passed very few people on the sidewalk, and only a handful of cars. He passed the empty houses, thinking to himself that though they were silent, they were happier than his humble home. What he wouldn't give for his house to be silent, just forever.

There was one house though, that wasn't quiet and seemed oddly similar to Johnny's house. Listening hard, he could have sworn he heard _screams _coming from the inside, though it _could _have been his imagination. He didn't think it was though. He hadn't gone _that _crazy yet. He even stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, listening as hard as possible, wondering what he was meant to do.

Eventually, he decided he better keep his nose out of other people's business, and hurried home.

He didn't know where his father was, and he didn't want to know. It was just his mother at home, keeled over the kitchen table, reading notes and letters that looked official. He stumbled into the kitchen before he could stop himself and before he'd realized she was sitting there, with the intention of getting some painkillers. She looked up at him, blinking like he'd shined a bright light in her face and was fighting to regain her vision. She stood, which didn't make much of a difference to her height, and gazed at him intently.

This was new. Johnny didn't know what to say, he'd never been in a position like this before. She walked right over to him, as if she was about to pass him. And then she tilted his head up, like she was examining his face. Gingerly, she touched his swollen, bloodied eye. It was almost painfully quiet now. Her mouth was creased in a hard, pained grimace. She looked him up and down once more, and then stalked past him, her head bowed.

Johnny stood rooted to the spot, hardly comprehending that that was reality. She was so _different _when his father wasn't around. He wasn't sure which he preferred. He was sure the second personality his mother had, the one she adopted when his father wasn't around, hurt him more, or at least cut him deeper.

But was it easier to handle? She didn't shriek at him, or aim bottles at his head, or snap snide remarks in his direction.

He'd barely registered she was gone when she was back, snatching up an old and tattered cardboard box she had left on the table. Now that he got a clearer look at her - out of his good eye - he could see the dried tear stains tracked clearly down her cheeks. She clutched the box to her chest, watching him almost fearfully, and steered out of the kitchen.

He went and got his aspirin and sat himself down at the kitchen table for a moment. It had started to rain again; he could hear the raindrops pattering at the window, like they were demanding entry.

He'd never seen that cardboard box before, not that he could remember anyway. His mother had seemed to protective of it. Every part of him burned with curiosity, and he couldn't help it searing a small hole in his heart that he couldn't explain. He winced as the door slammed shut, and then it was quiet. It was always quiet. Just to give himself something to do, he went for a cigarette, to keep his hands busy, to keep his brain occupied.

In his pocket was his last cigarette, but no lighter. His father's lighter. He checked all his jeans pockets, all his jacket pockets. He darted upstairs to his room, but it nowhere to be seen there either. He _needed _that lighter. He had some sort of ill-placed pride in it, like he took solace in it. And another just wouldn't do.

Groaning, he threw himself down on the bed, without even a cigarette for his peace of mind. The blood-stained tissues still littered his bedroom floor, and on his bed sheets was a large blood stain from where his cut had opened as he slept. He felt sick, lying down surrounded by all this. His stomach turned over and over, like it was taunting him.

xxx

Two days past, and not only was there not a sign of human contact between Johnny and anyone else, there was also no sign of his parents' return. There was also no sign of that lighter, that one prized possession, that no one knew anything about.

He had not gone out, and no one had come to call just yet. He supposed that Soda had been told what happened. Johnny knew that Soda not coming over was down to Soda being too scared to see him like this. He knew Soda well enough to know that, and that it wasn't because he didn't care. He didn't mind either way.

In two days he had healed very little, and was convinced that he looked worse that he had done the day after. It didn't matter anyway, no one was there to see.

So he could explain not a sign of contact, since he hadn't left the house. He was a little confused though - he thought Steve or maybe Two-Bit would have been around to check he was still alive or something.

His parents' absence he could not explain. He had no clue where they were, why they had left, or when they were coming back. They hadn't said anything to him. They hadn't told them anything; he hadn't even seen them, except for that brief encounter with his mother in the kitchen, when she had almost run out carrying that stupid cardboard box, that would not escape his mind no matter how he tried to banish it. And even then, not one word had she spoken to him, or at all. Just looked at him. Looked at the damage.

And the lighter? It pained him, but it seemed like that was gone for good.

Or so it seemed, until around eight, or a little after, on his third night alone.

He was just getting used to it. It was some form of controlled freedom in a way. He sat in the chair where his father usually sat - terrified out of his skin, but still - and he watched the television without interruption or the fear that his father would come storming in, throw from the chair against a wall or something, and aim a bottle at his head. He was somewhat relaxed. It felt ... safe.

There was a quiet, timid knock on the door (that was barely hanging on to its hinges).

The girl standing there gasped when Johnny opened it.

"Johnny, I -," Emma, Two-Bit's friend, or Holly's friend, or whoever's friend, was standing there, gaping at him, horror stricken. "I'm sorry, I just ... I wasn't expecting ..." She grimaced, clearly uncomfortable, not knowing what to say. Eventually she just shook her head. "Are you alright?"

Johnny shrugged. "Been better, been worse. Is something wrong?" he asked, wondering why in the name of God she would be knocking on his door, of all things.

She shook her head. "No I just -" she held out his little lighter. It didn't glisten under the light from the house. It was too scratched and used for that. There was no reflection of light, or a gleam. It just lay there delicately in her hands, dark and worn. "I found this out- outside my house. I thought it was yours."

"Yeah it is," he said, grinning broadly as he took it from her. "I've been looking for it. Thanks."

She smiled. "You're welcome." He pocketed it.

"You're awful good to come over and give it to me," Johnny said.

"Oh it was nothing," she said, surveying him as if she was in pain. She bit her lip. "I'll be right back," she blurted out, and hurried down the path back to her house. Closing the door to stop the breeze getting in, Johnny sat on the stairs, perplexed and waited, wondering whether she would be back.

She was back in only a minute.

"My mom used to use this on cuts and stuff all the time," she said, holding out a little bottle of light green cream. "It's homemade, it works a charm."

"Oh no," Johnny protested. "No you don't have to do that, it's fine, really." As he spoke, his head began to sting as if it was a fresh cut but he just shook his head resolutely. "Really, there's no need for that, I'll be alright."

Emma just smiled knowingly, before she pushed past him into his small, dingy kitchen and spread the ointment on a piece of tissue. "Please," she said. "It'll help, I promise."

And it did, it really did. Within a few minutes, it had soothed the pain and had cooled his entire head down. "I'll leave it here," she said, smirking a little as she set it down on the kitchen counter. "And if you run out - and I hope you do - please don't hesitate to -"

Johnny looked up when she stopped mid-sentence. "Somethin' wrong?" he asked her, not really knowing what else to say. She was looking over at the kitchen table, where a crumpled and tatty piece of paper was sitting.

"Where did you get this?" she breathed, snatching it up.

"Get what?"

"This drawing," she said, giving it a little shake.

It was the drawing of the gate that he'd found out on the road. The ornate gate with the 'SL' elaborately worked into it. Something seemed to click into place.

"I found it," Johnny said slowly, looking up at her, waiting for a reaction. She blinked and took a breath.

"Where?" she said quietly.

"Just outside on the sidewalk," Johnny told her. "It was rainin' when I found it, that's why it's such a mess," he added, almost apologetically.

"This is mine," she gulped, her eyes glistening. Oh, the last thing he wanted was for her to start crying, over something like this. He wouldn't have a clue what to do, or what to say. That was a job for Soda, or maybe even Two-Bit. "I - I thought it was gone. I _hoped _it was."

"What is it?" Johnny said in a small voice, terrified he'd upset her or make her mad.

"It's nothing," she said forcefully, tearing it in half. "It doesn't matter, I -" she tore the halves in half, "I don't know what I was thinking when I drew it," - she tore those halves in half, "It doesn't mean anythin'."

"You sure?" Johnny muttered.

She nodded vigorously, wearing a sad, small smile. "Maybe some day I'll tell ya. Just not today. It means nothin' anyway," she repeated, tearing those halves in half one last time, and then stuffing the pieces into her bag. Johnny thought this odd enough - why had she not just put it in the trash?

She looked down on the table, to make sure that that was all that was there, he supposed. But it wasn't. She took up a photograph, sniffling and blinked. It wasn't hers, but Johnny had never seen it before either.

"Who's this?" she said in a quiet voice, keen for a change of subject while she organized her thoughts. The hand holding her drawing was trembling.

Johnny took the photo from her. There was his mother, holding him up in her arms. He must have been about three or four at the most. He had one hand reached out towards the camera, sporting a toothy grin. His mother was looking down at him, laughing and holding a hand up to his. And there was his father, laughing away at the two of them, a baby clutched in his arms. A little blonde one, dressed all in pink. A little girl that he didn't know and didn't recognize; he had no clue who she was.

"I - I don't know," Johnny mumbled, embarrassed. "That's my Ma and my Pa and there's me but ..."

"The little girl?" said Emma softly. Johnny swallowed a lump in his throat. "You don't know, do you?" she whispered.

He shook his head numbly, his own hand trembling now. "No idea," he said idly, surprised to hear himself speak.

Emma said nothing. "Well, who could she be?"

Johnny twitched his shoulders - he had no clue.

"Do you know where you are?" she asked then. Johnny knew she was only trying to help, but he wished she wouldn't. He looked at the background anyway. It was sunny there; they were standing in front of a small but homely looking house, which was not the house he was standing in right now.

"Don't know that either," he said, his voice becoming smaller and smaller with each word. "I ... don't know. I don't understand."

Emma opened her mouth to speak, and closed it, several times. She said nothing however. Maybe she had nothing left to say, like he did. Maybe she had no more help to give him or advice to offer. All that was left to do was stare at the picture, thoughts and riddles chasing each other's tails in Johnny's mind, and his curiosity driving him insane.

"Could she be...?" Emma said eventually.

Johnny shook his head. He knew what she was getting at. It was out of the question. "Naw. Naw, she couldn't be." She just couldn't be. It just wasn't possible. It was almost as if someone had burned a hole through his brain, and now he had lost out on some knowledge, lost out of something he ought to have known. And now he didn't know. He felt like it had been erased from his memory, but he should have remembered it it in the first place. The irksome part was that he didn't think he would remembered in the first place. And now the curiosity of it all was now burning an even larger hole in his brain.

What were his parents hiding? He could only guess, with the help of whoever would guess with him. So much Johnny didn't understand, and yet here was no one, not a soul, to give him answers.

* * *

Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

No, you're not hallucinating, this has actually been updated. I don't own the Outsiders, excuse typos, et cetera! Happy reading!

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_Boy howdy. _Johnny could have gazed into that faded picture for a thousand years. But Emma was just standing there, and from the door he could hear fumbling, that made his heart hammer like there was a ravenous, blood-thirsty monster on the other side, clawing at the door, craving his flesh. Instead of his own parents.

If he stopped caring - would they start? Was that how it was meant to work?

Swearing to himself, he stuffed the picture into his pocket, hearing it rip but not caring how it tore or bent. Emma grimaced, obviously unsure of what to do with herself.

Johnny was halfway out the kitchen door, dragging her along with him - she grabbed the bottle of cream she'd brought as they went, probably sensing that she should - when he came face to face with his father, whose bloodshot, beady eyes scanned over Johnny and raked in the girl behind him, who was gaping at him like she was searching her brain for words she could use.

For a few moments, Johnny was convinced that his heart would never start beating again, but his father just pushed past him, muttering to himself about where the brandy was.

He heard Emma let out a small, shaky breath behind him, and he swallow, feeling more embarrassed than he had done in a long time. He'd probably looked like a lost rabbit about to be run down by a train going two hundred miles an hour. It wasn't like that. He was tougher than that. And the way she was looking at him, like he was a scared, broken creature who could barely take care of himself - it just made him angry.

"Johnny-" she started, but she hesitated. Johnny understood; what did you say to a kid who was very clearly terrified of his own father? Because it must have looked that way.

His mouth tightened. What had he to be scared of anyway? It wasn't a fear that had stopped him at his father's feet. It was ... just anticipation. Preparation, he supposed, for what he had gotten into the habit of expecting.

He felt his cheeks flush. He didn't want her to think he was just a scared kid. He didn't want _anyone _to think he was just a scared kid, that he wasn't tough enough to handle his own parents.

Maybe Emma sensed some of this, because all she did was just press her bottle of ointment into his hands.

"Thanks," he muttered numbly. "I feel better already," he lied, grinning at her. He wasn't no chicken.

She wrinkled her nose, studying him thoughtfully. "Do I want to ask what happened to your eye?" she asked eventually.

He shook his head.

"I didn't think so," she said, with a pained expression. That just made Johnny feel even worse. He didn't want her pity. He didn't want _anybody's _God damned pity.

"I better go then," she said then, clearing her throat. "Let me know if you run out," she added. "I'll bring over some more."

"Thanks again," Johnny said quickly.

"Don't mention it," she smiled.

The moment she had let the door click shut behind her, Johnny darted upstairs to the cold and dark refuge of his bedroom, not keen to be left to be his father's punchbag before he had even regained the ability to see out his two eyes.

xxx

Johnny found that church really wasn't that bad at all. Ponyboy liked to go - he liked it a lot, though Johnny wasn't sure why. And he wouldn't say, but he liked it probably more than Ponyboy did. They'd gotten into the habit of going on Sundays. Sometimes, it seemed like the sermon seemed to make sense.

After a particularly bad bruising from his old man, and his mom hadn't talked to him in a grand total of fifteen days, the sermon seemed to make sense of it.

Sure, three hours later, he didn't really remember how he'd made sense of it in any way, but he liked to think it helped a little bit.

Johnny had even tried to beg Dally to go, once.

Dallas had been sleeping on the Curtises' couch that night. His voice was hoarse and there were two dark rings under his eyes. In the kitchen, Soda was, once again, reiterating to Ponyboy about Buck Merrill's place.

"I'm tellin' ya, Pone," he was saying. "If I catch you anywhere _near _that place, I'll skin ya worse than Darry ever could."

Johnny heard Ponyboy snort. "Shoot, Soda, you ain't ever gonna holler at me like Darry does. Darry never stops."

"Well you just try stepping _foot_in that place, and you'll find out," Soda replied coolly. "And Ponyboy, I told you he don't mean it. He's just worryin' about you, that's all it is."

"Sure," Ponyboy muttered, throwing down his fork and stalking out of the kitchen. Soda followed, rubbing at his eye with one hand.

Johnny turned back to Dally, who was glaring back at him with a steely defiance.

"Please, Dal," he pleaded, popping his jacket collar. "It really ain't that bad."

"Kid," Dally sighed, exasperated. "I don't belong in a church."

"Everyone belongs in church," Johnny replied. "They tell you that at the end."

Dallas chuckled. "Glory, quit kiddin' yourself. I ain't goin' ten feet near that place," he said, in a tone that clearly added '_And that's final!'_

So Johnny had never managed to get Dally to come to church with them. For weeks afterward, he wondered whether Dally would have been affected by it all. Maybe he wouldn't have been in and out of the cooler, back in nearly just as soon as he got out again. Somehow Johnny doubted it. You couldn't get through to Dally - and he was pretty sure _church_ wouldn't have changed that. And besides, it didn't do any good to wonder.

Ponyboy and Johnny _had,_however, managed to convince Sodapop to come along once. And Sodapop had somehow managed to convince Steve to come along, although Johnny would never understand how. He supposed that when you're best buddies so well and so long with someone, you find a way to twist their arm. But he didn't think _anyone _would have thought they'd be able to make Steve come along to church. And Soda'd done it.

Then again, no one said no to Soda.

So Soda was coming, as long as Steve was going, which he was. And Two-Bit, never wanting to feel left out, decided he might as well come along. Two-Bit would never be out of the loop.

So Pony had somehow convinced the three of them to come to church with him and Johnny. And Johnny regretted that as much as not being able to get Dally to come along.

xxx

_Glory, _Johnny thought, if Ponyboy's ears got any redder, they'd sear and fall off.

Knowing that Sodapop and Two-Bit were _still_trying to stop themselves sniggering, Johnny chose to ignore them, for the sake of his sanity.

"Well that was some ..."

"Trainwreck," Johnny finished for Ponyboy. They both grimaced.

"Well that was ..." Soda started, but trailed off when he saw how red Ponyboy's face was.

"So," Two-Bit said, grinning. "We goin' back next week?"

Ponyboy was so indignant, all he could was let out a little squeak. Even Steve was smirking, but Soda just smiled knowingly.

"I don't know man," he said to Two-Bit. "I dont' know about you, but I didn't exactly get the feelin' they were gonna invite us back with open arms."

Two-Bit grinned, cocking his eyebrow. "Musta just been you, Sodapop. Everyone invites me back," he said, punching him playfully.

"Right," Soda replied. "Anyone wanna play some football?" he said then.

Steve groaned. "I've had half a pack already, I can't play after that many smokes."

"Ain't it a bit early to have smoked half a pack already?" Ponyboy asked.

Steve shot him a dark look, and Soda laughed. "Look who's talking, weed fiend." He punched Ponyboy playfully on the shoulder.

"Well I ain't the one goin' playin' football, am I?" said Ponyboy.

"Me neither," Johnny said. "I'm goin' home."

Ponyboy looked at him reproachfully. "You don't wanna go for a walk, Johnny?"

Johnny sighed. Truth be told, he _didn't _want to go for a walk, but he couldn't refuse Ponyboy like that. The kid got really insulted when you sort of, blew him off or anything like that. He didn't get that people weren't in the mood for him, all the time. "Sure, Pone," Johnny said. "I'll go for a walk."

Ponyboy smiled.

"We'll see y'all later," Two-Bit hollered. The three of them went one way, Ponyboy and Johnny went the other. It felt a lot more monumental than it actually was.

It was starting to drizzle just a small bit, and the sky was an angry, threatening grey. Every so often, Johnny would catch Ponyboy's eyes flicker up to his eye, which was still yellow, and angry looking, in the process of healing, although it was a lot better. Emma's ointment had really helped a lot, and she had been coming by every so often to bring him some more. Secretly, Johnny thought she was still coming by because she was worried about him. He wasn't sure whether he liked that or not, but he didn't want to admit it either way.

"Somethin' wrong, Ponyboy?" Johnny said to him, deciding quickly that he couldn't stand Ponyboy just gaping at his eye and never spitting out whatever it was he needed to say.

"Well," Pony started awkwardly, looking at his shoes. "How's your ...?" he trailed off, grimacing, making an awkward gesture to his eye.

Johnny grinned weakly. "It's alright, it's gettin' better. The girl who lives next door to me, she's got this cream stuff and it really helps."

"Who's that?" asked Ponyboy.

"Emma somethin'," said Johnny. "I never remember her last name."

Ponyboy's brow furrowed. "I think I might know her," he murmured.

Johnny shrugged, pondering whether to go back to Ponyboy's or head home. He hadn't been around there in a while. He'd been purposefully avoiding the place, because he knew he would never be ready to see Darry's face when he caught sight of his own. And he just couldn't bear to do that to Darry. Darry, who tried so hard to help everyone, who was always so kind and understanding ... Darry, who really had enough to worry about without adding Johnny to the top of the pile as well. It just wasn't fair, and Johnny recognized that. He wasn't about to be a burden anymore than he already was.

"Listen man," Ponyboy said. "Have you been talkin' to Dally?"

Johnny shook his head.

"Well, I think you should," he went on. "About ..." he trailed off again, grimacing. Johnny had to stop himself rolling his eyes. So he'd gotten a little beat up around his eyes. It was hard enough, but what was even harder was Ponyboy's attitude. He was trying his best to tiptoe around the whole thing, beating around the bush. Why couldn't he just say it? He only looked at it when he thought Johnny didn't see, and he never referred to it as anything other than a grimace. It was just plain irritating.

"Why?" Johnny said. "Ain't nothin' Dal can do about it now."

Ponyboy just opened his mouth and closed it again a few times, looking at Johnny oddly. "Well I still think you should talk to him," he said eventually. "Once you get a chance."

Johnny just shrugged. "Heck, Dal got a lot more to be worried about than stuff like that, I don't wanna be botherin' him."

"Johnny, there ain't nothin' Dallas cares about more'n you," Ponyboy told him.

Johnny smiled weakly and shrugged again. "Right." If only Ponyboy would listen to his own advice - he was describing Darry in a nutshell, only he was too blind to see it.

"Man, I gotta get home," he said suddenly. Ponyboy's face fell, but he nodded.

"I'll see you later."

Johnny turned to walk home - and jerked his head in the other direction, almost immediately. There was a gate there, he was sure of it. And yet, it wasn't there now. At all. He scanned the entire street, but there was no sign of a gate that he nearly had memorized.

With his heart starting to hammer again, Johnny hurried home, eyes peeled for a sign of a gate that he knew he was really seeing.

He tiptoed on into his house - not knowing why, since no one cared whether or when he came and went, but he tiptoed anyway - and made to slip right upstairs. He could hear his parents from the kitchen. He knew without needing to see anything that his father was sitting at the table, a glass of brandy in one hand and the bottle in the other - no matter what time in the day it was - and his mom was more than likely cleaning some dishes, or making more food so she could clean some dishes.

Their voices wafted in to where he stood, listening by the foot of the stairs, with the hope that his own name might crop up, though he doubted it.

"I heard that the father killed himself about three years ago," his mother was saying. "And about two months ago, the son went the same way."

"How - how many are left?" his father croaked, sounding tired.

"Well I'm not sure," his mother said, in her nasal, gritty voice. "I know there's a girl. I've seen her around the house far too much lately," she snapped.

"They're the ones that live right behind us, aren't they?" his father said gruffly.

"Mm-hmm. They're all out of their minds anyway," his mother replied. "They all act like goddamn flower children. I don't know what they think they spend their time doing."

"And what happened when the son went and topped himself?" his father said.

"Well," his mother said, not at all put off by the blassé attitude her husband to the idea of suicide. "None of them went out much. They ain't normal anyway. They keep to themselves."

By that time, Johnny was too tired and crestfallen to hear anymore. He just went upstairs, thinking to himself of how his parents were downstairs, talking about some poor unfortunate family that had two tragedies in recent years.

Would they talk about him when - _if, _if he did that to himself? Would they gush over it while he took a drink and she cleaned up? Would they able to? Or would they even care at all? For one, wild, crazy moment, he knew that they wouldn't even notice.

If he ever had the guts, he'd do it. He really would. They'd miss him then, when they didn't have a punchbag and a blank face that wouldn't say anything back when they yelled at it. They'd miss that. But as for him - really him, and just him - well Johnny just didn't know.

He fell asleep that night to an image of a gate, behind which lightning flashed, and he could hear thunder rumbling - though he couldn't explain the thunder or the lightning. It flashed before his eyes like it was painted into the insides of his eyelids.

There was no getting rid of it, for the whole night. There was no getting rid of any of it.

* * *

There'll only be about seven chapters left of this, so the constant lack of updating is near an end!


	9. Chapter 9

I don't own it. But I did write it before three months had passed. That's almost just as good!

* * *

Johnny's twitching hands were still bleeding a little bit, raw and sore from the impact his father's belt had had on his arms. His mother's screeches now echoed through the house, and his father's bellows resonated just as well. He slapped her once to twice - since Johnny had hidden himself away upstairs - but she, like Johnny, had grown accustomed to that kind of behaviour, and she took it without even batting an eyelid. Besides, she never got the bare brunt of anything Johnny's father decided to do - that was a treatment reserved especially for Johnny.

Not for the first time, Johnny wondered why they were _still _sticking this out, living the way they were. Why were they still even here? What was tying them to each other so completely and inescapably, though they spent almost every day hating each other and hating Johnny? That's how he knew it wasn't him keeping them rooted to the spot.

He'd stopped listening - those two would fight over the air they were breathing if they were in the right mood, which was a lot of the time. When he'd decided he'd had enough, he came downstairs in a healthy, unperturbed pace, thinking wistfully of how he'd love to dip his searing his hands into a bowl of ice cold water/ His parents were too deeply immersed in their fight to realize he was leaving - or breathing - and he didn't even think that they noticed the door slam. He could still hear them roaring and clawing away at each other as if nothing had happened, nothing had moved, nothing had changed.

He was headed for the Curtis household - mainly out of habit more than anything else. When he thought about it, it was where the guys in the gang ended up most of the time, but there was a reason for that. Johnny himself wouldn't let the guys in his front door if the rest of the world was burning at their feet; Steve hated his home with a red-hot rage, and everyone sort of understood the unspoken message that the place was sort of out of bounds, though Soda hung out there sometimes with Steve. Besides, Steve was only welcome there about half the week if he was lucky.

As for Two-Bit - well sure, Johnny spent a lot of time at Two-Bit's, and his Mama was more than happy to have the boys in her house - she said it brightened the whole house up - but Johnny was mostly there when no one else but Two-Bit was. Mrs. Mathews was so sweet-natured, she fussed over you no matter who you were, and Johnny always felt a little guilty when she was trying her hardest to take care of her kids' friends, when she was struggling as it was with the two she had. And no one liked to put that kind of pressure on Two-Bit's Ma.

And Dally - well, Dally didn't have a home to begin with.

When Johnny got the house anyway, Soda was the only one home - Darry had met with some friends for lunch, and Ponyboy was off with Curly Shepard, Soda told him dubiously.

Ponyboy was one fickle kid. He forgot about his old stuff once a shiny new toy came along, even if it was only temporary. The kid didn't mean to be whimsical like that - he was just thirteen years old, was all.

Soda had made an early start on dinner, with the time spent alone - which was one of the few things that Soda hated, almost to the point of fearing it. Like how he hated school. Not a lot of people realized it, and if he had to Soda'd lone it anywhere, but really he couldn't stand to be on his own. In more ways than one - he hated when he didn't have a girl, and tried his best to make sure he did have one, almost always, he hated when all his buddies were busy. Johnny more than anyone else knew that Soda hated when he alone in a class didn't understand what he was being told. It connected to the rest, really.

He was real different to Ponyboy in that way, who could quite easily spend the day wandering around the town all by his lonesome, who walked almost everywhere alone without a second thought, who even preferred to go to the movies alone, because having other people with him just plain annoyed him.

Whenever Soda got really into cooking, all the cupboards and drawers would be spread wide open, jars and tins lay opened and abandoned, various wrappers and ingredients scattered and strewn around the kitchen, occasionally in the most peculiar places; like they were now.

"I used to watch my Ma cook all the time," Soda'd once told Johnny. "And she always used add all these spices and stuff."

The moment he entered the house, Johnny knew Soda was back in the kitchen.

"Hey Soda," he called. "What's cookin'?"

"Ain't sure yet," Soda hollered. "I'll let you know when I found out. You havin' dinner here?"

Johnny leaned in the door frame, shrugging his shoulders noncommittally. Soda threw down a towel, and turned to Johnny, leaning against the counter.

"If you're lookin' for Pony," he said. "He's off with Curly, I told you he would be." He threw his eyes up to Heaven, smiling.

"Naw," Johnny said quickly, absent-mindedly scratching his nose. "My folks were just fighint again," he explain, as Soda's expression changed.

It didn't change to anger and frustration, like Steve or Dally's would have done, or confusion, like Ponyboy or Two-Bit's would have. Soda just looked plain sad.

"Your ol' man take his jeans belt to you?" he asked, very calmly, eyeing Johnny's hands.

Johnny nodded. "No big deal."

Soda nodded once like he was simply accepting that, and then he grimaced. "You wanna put a towel over 'em or somethin'? That looks awful sore."

Johnny nodded, and Soda wet a towel for him, while he mopped up his hands. Soda was uncharacteristically quiet, his brown eyes dancing and flickering as he waited.

The towel was relief like putting out a fire slowly burning all his skin away, soothing his scorching skin and easing his piercing cuts. They both grimaced when red seeped into the fabric.

"Johnny - " Soda started.

"Please Soda," Johnny said quickly, in a small voice. "Just don't, man."

Soda studied him, and Johnny wished sheepishly that his face wasn't bruised and battered, and that his eyes weren't hopelessly dark and afraid.

Finally, Soda threw up his hands. "Fine," he muttered coarsely. "You just wait 'til Dally hears this."

"Oh come on man," Johnny mumbled. "Ain't no need to tell Dal about it. Hell, he's got more to worry about. Besides he knows what my ol' man is like."

"He damn sure does not have more to worry about," Soda said sharply. "Dal don't worry 'bout nothing but you," he said. Then he fell completely and strangely silent, like someone had just turned the volume down on his, and he shook his head, apparently out of words.

Johnny looked back at Soda. He liked Soda a real lot, because he always understood what Johnny was trying to say and he always knew when Johnny really meant something. And Soda - unlike a lot of other people - took it on board, no matter how he felt about it.

He gave a little start, like he was trying to shake the conversation off him, and then turned back to the kitchen, which resembled a bombsite more than anything else

"C'mon," Soda said. "You can help me make my famous mystery sauce."

"What's in it?" Johnny asked him.

"Don't know," Soda replied, throwing his hands up. "That's the point - it's a mystery." And he grinned - that dazzling grin that girls stopped to stare at - and Johnny grinned too. Soda could do that to you.

xxx

The next few days slowly melted into weeks, and they passed slower than usual. As they did, Johnny's head was much quieter than it had ever been before in his life. He wasn't used to this sort of silence. It wasn't peaceful. It was just the opposite actually. It was restless and fearful and just plain confused.

They passed without phenomena or anything noteworthy, and before any of them knew, Two-Bit's favourite day of the year, April 1st, had come and gone like a flash of lightning. He loved it, he said, because it was the only day of the year people deliberately tried to act in the way that Two-Bit lived his whole life.

A week later, Two-Bit was _still _chortling on about the joke he'd pulled on his poor, unsuspecting mother, calling her up and telling her that her grandchild was about to be born, and she better get her ass over to the hospital as soon as she could. He thought it was awful funny, almost as funny as the time he'd cut his sister's hair off as a practical joke, when he was about twelve or thirteen. He said that still claimed the number one spot, but this year's was close behind it.

Two-Bit thought the idea of him having kids was awful funny too. Johnny couldn't see him having kids either - he was like one big overgrown, smoking, boozing, cussing, wise-cracking ten-year-old himself, with an inexplicable taste for school and beer and blondes. Johnny could hardly wait for the day he'd be a father, of all things.

Ponyboy was a little quieter than he usually was, since Soda had dropped out of school - about three weeks at this point - and though he didn't say anything, because he didn't want to hurt Soda, Johnny knew Ponyboy was cut up about it really. He guessed that Ponyboy, who had always been a real smart, real good kid, just could never understand how some people didn't manage to get things in school, the way Soda and Johnny were.

Johnny was a little upset too, since he always felt a little better about going to school when he knew that Soda would be there. But Soda wanted to work full time at the DX - which was picking up a lot of business, thanks to him and Steve - and he just didn't _want _to be in school anymore. Johnny got that. So now Soda worked full time at the gas station, and helped Darry pay the bills. Darry was grateful, and Ponyboy said nothing.

Johnny's eye was a whole lot better by then, almost completely healed, thanks mostly to Emma's cream. But Glory, he hadn't expected one belt in the eye that his father had thrown his way to leave such a shiner, and for so long.

On a day that it was drizzling away quietly in a sea of pale grey, Emma came knocking at the door. His parents, seated so comfortably in front of the television that Johnny doubted they would ever peel themselves away again, acted as if they hadn't heard. Johnny, blatantly and completely ignored, stepped outside, then only place where they were both welcome.

"Your eye looks better," she said, staring up at it with eyes as round as coins. She clutched a book to her chest protectively, and her face was pale.

"Thanks to you," Johnny replied, in a voice that he saved especially for people he didn't know, and people he wanted to think he was tough. "That stuff you gave me sure works a charm." A ghost of a smile flickered across Emma's face.

"Actually," she said. "That's what I'm here for. You got any left?"

"Sure," Johnny said. "I got about half left, if it's any good to you."

Emma nodded somberly.

"I'll get it for ya," said Johnny, retreating into his house.

In five minutes, he returned to find her sitting on the edge of the damp steps, her staring eyes in another world. That book - sketch pad, actually - that she'd held so closely to her chest was now flipped up, and she was tracing the same line over and over, one that looked like it was about to force a hole through the paper. She wasn't even looking at the paper.

"What's that?" Johnny asked, and Emma jumped so violently, the pen went flying out of her fingers, and the sketchpad slid off her lap, landing on the path with a gentle splat. Johnny bent and picked it up gingerly, while Emma grimaced at it the whole time.

"What is that?" Johnny said again, looking carefully at the drawing, feeling like his blood had just run cold. The last time he'd seen one of these, it had been snatched out from under his nose, and so much else had been shoved in the way that he'd forgotten all about it.

"Nothing," Emma said airily, trying and failing miserably to keep herself sounding nonchalant. "Just a doodle, I don't even -"

"I've been there," Johnny cut across her, surprising himself. Strictly speaking, he didn't _know _if he'd really been there, or if he'd imagined it, or what.

"No you haven't," Emma said sadly.

Johnny blinked back down at the drawing, as occasionally a stray, lost raindrop would fall and bleed into the paper. There was no mistaking that gate, that intricate _SL _weaved into it.

"How would I - " Johnny started. "Where is this place?"

Emma sighed. "It's nowhere, Johnny. It's not a place."

"Well, what is it then?" Johnny asked impatiently, just feeling confused.

"I can't tell you anything about it," Emma replied, aghast. Glory, she could go awful red in the face.

"Please," Johnny said softly. "Emma, I've seen -"

"I don't care what you've seen, or where you've been, or what you think you know," she said forcefully, angry blotches appearing on her cheeks. "It's all wrong, and you don't know nothin', and I ain't telling' you a single blasted thing about that stupid gate."

Her eyes were glistening, and she snatched the sketchbook out of his hands. She seemed real upset, but Johnny just couldn't bring himself to be sorry. If he was sorry for anyone, it was for him. He could feel something slip away from him, which had been so close and yet just out of reach.

This wasn't a coincidence. It just couldn't be. _That _wasn't his imagination playing tricks on him. This was more than that.

Emma would tell him nothing, and he sunk into deeper disappointment with every passing second. She left in a hurry, and Johnny was so baffled by the cascades of thoughts bearing down on his shoulders, until they burned and seared under the weight, his head began to ache.

They seemed to be the only two people in the world who knew about this gate's existence, or at least who gave it a moment's thought. And Emma was as silent as the grave.

The disappointment was bitter, and he felt like he should have been able to make Emma say something, something little at least. She knew something, he knew that she knew something that he needed to know - she had answers.

Still, every time he thought of that drawing, that black gate, swirled in what was clearly iron, etched in loose, messy pencil markings, he knew there was something just plain evil about it, surrounding it.

xxx

"You done your homework?" Darry was scanning Ponyboy crossly, and Ponyboy stared back at him sullenly.

"Yeah," he replied surlily. Darry raised his eyebrows.

Johnny stood awkwardly at the door, waiting for Darry to let Ponyboy out for a walk on what was turning out to be a sunny, long-stretching evening - though a school night. He knew Darry would let Ponyboy out, after making the kid promise, more forcefully than Darry meant to, that he'd be home at a reasonable hour and he'd take care of himself.

Ponyboy waited, staring at Darry darkly. Soda, seated on the edge of the couch was rubbing his temples.

"C'mon Dar," he muttered, stifling a yawn. "Let him go out for an hour or two." He smiled, winking at Ponyboy and Johnny. "He knows how to look after himself." Darry looked at Soda, and Ponyboy beamed at him, and Soda just stared back at Darry so innocently and happily that eventually Darry cracked a grin.

"Alright," he agreed. "But don't be back too late, you got school in the morning."

"I _won't,_" Ponyboy muttered. "Jeez Darry, give it a break."

He sauntered past; he was out the door when Darry turned to look at Soda, and Soda, with a tired expression, opened his mouth to speak. Johnny followed Ponyboy out; he was lighting a cigarette as he walked.

"I swear," he muttered through the smoke, once Johnny had fallen into step beside him. "If Darry doesn't let up and get off my back soon, my head's gonna about explode. I ain't kiddin'."

Johnny sniffed. "Aw Pone, you know he's just tryna look out for you."

"No he don't," Ponyboy snapped back. "_Soda's _the only one looking out for me. All Darry's tryna do is give me a hard time."

Johnny nearly squeaked with indignation. For all his booksmarts, Ponyboy didn't know the first thing about the very _definition _of a hard time. All Ponyboy knew was too much love in his life, so much it smothered him and came off as cold and hostile behavior. But it wasn't. It was loving, disguised as something else, something harder, to make all of it easier, or because that was the only way it was going to come out, the only way it was going to work.

And Johnny could tell you - he knew all about cold and hostile behavior. Hell, he had known violent, aggressive behavior all his ife.

And what Ponyboy was going through - that was not it.

Ponyboy didn't get any of that. How Ponyboy could even entertain the thought that there was even a tiny fleck of hatred in his life - apart from the Socs, which he kept a clear, safe distance from anyway - was beyond Johnny. Seemed awful unfair though. Ponyboy complained a helluva lot about Darry, after all Darry had done for him. And Johnny - Johnny never opened his mouth, never said one word, after all the things his parents had done _to _him. Maybe you just had to be seeing things through Johnny's eyes to really get it. And he wouldn't wish that on anybody, especially not a kid like Ponyboy.

* * *

I just want to say that I know I make it seem like Johnny's life is pure hell, all day every day, so I'm pointing out that I literally only highlight the worst days (or the best, if I need to). Just in case anyone thought I was getting a little _too _melodramatic. And no romance, I swear.


	10. Chapter 10

I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

The moment he woke up, Johnny checked the locker beside his bed. Less than a minute ago, he had been looking at a crackled picture - the same one he'd found in the kitchen. It seemed so long ago now. And yet, it wasn't sitting there, perched on top of a watch that hadn't worked in about four years. He didn't even know why he still kept it there. It was almost like it was rooted there.

His mind was playing tricks on him when he was sleeping. He hadn't dared go looking for the picture again - he knew better than that.

But surely it meant something. Otherwise, it would have left him alone by now.

That wasn't the only thing he saw behind closed eyelids either. The same gate he had been unable to stop thinking about - that somehow, inexplicably connected straight to Emma's face - well, it had become familiar territory to him. He felt like had been there - he was almost sure he had, that one time he had turned a corner and found himself nowhere he recognized. But Hell, he'd recognize it now, if he ever found his way back there.

And he hadn't decided whether he was hoping he would, or hoping he wouldn't.

xxx

He left the house in a hurry - something he made a habit of doing.

It was Saturday, but Ponyboy was studying for some big Biology test for next Tuesday, and Darry was keeping one eye over his shoulder. Soda was working at one, and Steve had a bucket load of homework to do. Dally was probably still living in the night before, and Two-Bit was nursing a pretty bad hangover, he heard from Holly.

Or as she put, "He's damn hungover like the bum he is. Again."

"That's then you owe me, Sodapop," Johnny reminded him, grinning. Soda frowned behind his cards.

"Aw hell," he muttered. "Don't bother me none, I don't even use 'em."

"Well good," Johnny chuckled. "'Cause they're mine now."

"You'll be lucky if he _has _ten smokes on him, Johnny," remarked Darry, slapping his cards down. "I fold."

Johnny grinned, and Soda scowled.

"I got plenty," he replied coolly. "I won the last round."

"Yeah, betting _my _Kools!" snorted Ponyboy.

Soda ignored him, throwing down his cards with a sigh and throwing his hands up.

"That's twelve you owe me," Johnny pointed out.

Sodapop grunted. "I gotta stop bettin' all my smokes away."

"Yeah, what else are ya gonna bet with, little brother?" Darry said teasingly, punching him playfully on the shoulder. Johnny saw Ponyboy's shoulders hunch and his eyes flicker between his two older brothers.

Johnny grinned, scooping up the cards to deal them again. "Alright Soda," he said. "One chance to win 'em back, all or nothin'."

Soda grinned back at him.

xxx

Back to his house - his home for every reason but the important ones - where an eerie chill and a sinister silence lingered, hanging in the air. He didn't know where his parents were, and he realized that the thought of that terrified him.

Johnny physically flinched when he walked into the kitchen, for two reasons. The first - a startling and vivid memory of a fist flying at all speed in his face, two nights ago, his father's, came screaming back to him, and he almost felt himself duck out of the way, though there was no one standing in front of him. Only his own shadow, and the empty space that seemed so much emptier than it had before. The second - an array of crumpled papers, spilling over the edges of the kitchen table, the same as how he had left them, were calling his name.

His parents - disturbingly enough, though he hardly noticed - had discussed suicide last night, and Johnny had sat at the top of the stairs, listening intently for a reason he didn't fully understand. He didn't hear the whos, or the hows, and he only barely heard the whys. What he heard was the whats.

And thoughts had seeped into his brain like blood blossoming through a cloth, swallowing the threads in its wake. Would they miss him if he was gone? Though he didn't mean for it, he couldn't stop the thought. And once it had entered his brain, it latched on and fixated itself, and now he couldn't banish it. It was there, and was there for good. If he ended it now like he'd considered doing frequently, would his parents care? Would they _notice? _

Would anyone?

Grimacing, Johnny began scooping up the balls of paper, shying away from his own scribbles, his thoughtful, desperate sad words that stood out like they were tattooed into his own skin. The gang would notice, a little voice in the back of his head said, a voice that sounded peculiarly like Dally. It would kill them, the voice said gruffly, sounding a little desperate, even to Johnny's own ears. He shook his head, snatching at the papers. Yes, they gang would care, he told himself. They'd care an awful lot.

"Johnny?"called a voice from the door, which was followed by a loud and echoing slam. Johnny froze.

"Johnny, you here?" said a second voice, distinctly Two-Bit's. What were they doing here? He scanned the discarded papers cast all around the kitchen. Hastily, he scrambled to gather up the papers, including one - one suicide note - that still lay untouched, smooth and crisp on the table where it lay, left a little away from the others, separated as something higher up than the rest of them, his own untidy scrawl finally perfectly the words he'd needed to release.

He folded that one carefully instead of bunching it up, glancing over his shoulder as he did, with the intention of keeping it separate, and keeping it hidden.

"Johnny, you here?" The first voice was Sodapop's, he realized then.

"Y-yeah," Johnny hollered, showing the scrolled up first drafts in a near drawer, where over the years a horrendous amount of junk had accumulated. It was rarely opened, and the family - if you could call it that - stored everything that they never wanted to see again in this drawer. They were untouchable. There was so much crap in there anyway that it would take a while to dig it all up. He turned over the folded, finalized note in his hands, feverishly scanning the kitchen for a place to hide it, but some place he could find it again. At the sound of unnaturally low voices, careful murmurs, from the other room, Johnny swallowed hard. "In here," he called, frantically wrenching open a cupboard and throwing the note in on top of an old rectangular cardboard box, held together with excessive amounts of tape.

He slammed it shut with unnecessary force, just as Soda and Two-Bit entered the kitchen, looking so young and carefree.

"You left your jeans jacket behind," said Soda, and Two-Bit triumphantly held out the jacket.

"I was all for selling it," he joked. "Cash is a little tight at the moment," he remarked, looking at them both like he was expecting an outcry.

Johnny took the jacket gratefully. "What happened to your five finger discount?" he asked Two-Bit coolly.

Two-Bit drew up one eyebrow, looking at Johnny with great amusement, like he couldn't decide between being unimpressed or proud. "Nothin'," he chirped happily. "But you don't get gas for free," he said, "No matter what you manage to swipe. and this knucklehead won't lemme have it for free," he added, jerking his thumb at Soda.

Soda laughed, poking Two-Bit in the arm. "Yeah well, I ain't tryin' to lose my job," he said. "The rest of us ain't so good at swiping whatever we see."

"You make it sound so bland," said Two-Bit, like he was offended, but he was grinning. "It's my art. My trade."

"Hey Two-Bit," said Johnny, with false brightness. "Here's a crazy idea - why don't you get a job?" he suggested, with the tone of a kid who was ten years old suggesting to his other ten year old friends that they go get some ice cream, and then ride their bikes down to the lake and skip rocks.

Soda started to snigger uncontrollably, and Two-Bit gaped at Ponyboy, aghast. "In what universe?" he said loudly, very clearly appalled. Soda's sniggering subsided quickly - he let out a last, gratifying chuckle, and sighed.

"Right after you run for President and grow a third left," he said. "Right Two-Bit?" He punched Two-Bit's shoulder playfully.

"Damn straight," replied Two-Bit resolutely. "I doubt any place would even let me work with a third leg anyway," he added, frowning in the thought of it.

Soda chuckled. "You're probably right."

Johnny shook his head at the two, smiling fondly. And yet his eyes darted to the cupboard again and again, like he was afraid that one of the boys would leap across the kitchen with an athleticism they did not actually possess, yank the cupboard open and stumble upon the hurtful letter before he could stop them. He didn't want to hurt them, any of them. And Johnny knew them well enough to know that showing them what he'd been thinking about - they weren't about to thump him on the back and tell him "good goin'".

"Anyway," said Soda. "I made him bring it over." He was talking to Johnny, nodding his head to the jeans jacket that Johnny still held lightly between his fingers. "I don't trust him on his own," he added, grinning ear to ear. "And you need your jacket."

Two-Bit shook his head with feigned disappointment. "You know Soda," he said, heaving a sigh like there was no heartache like his own. "It's a shame you gotta act so god damn nice the whole time. A real shame you got that decent streak."

Soda laughed along with Johnny.

"A real waste of a perfectly good hood, if you ask me," remarked Two-Bit insistently. "Which, may I point out, no one did."

Johnny smiled, his leg beginning to bounce beyond his control, his thoughts lingering on the cupboard, or more on what would happen if they happened to open it and find what he'd put in there for the exact reason of keeping it out of their way.

Soda frowned at him in confusion for just a second - he must have seen something flicker across Johnny's face - but then Two-Bit launched into what was undoubtedly one of Two-Bit's long-winded and wild, pointless stories, so Soda eventually looked at him and grinned, his dark eyes slightly less engaged than they had been a few moments before.

When Two-Bit was done, he shook his head. "We'll see you later Johnny," he said, after he'd coerced Two-Bit to the door.

"We leaving already?" Two-Bit muttered.

"See you guys later," Johnny called.

He stood in silence after they had left, running the thin, coarse material of his jacket through his fingers. They cared - really they did. That's why he couldn't let them see what he'd penned, in any shape or form. That was also the reason that the next time he would open the drawer - just checking - his balled up and abandoned attempts to say goodbye would brim over and pile out onto the floor, where he would stand, frowning at them.

He had to make it sound right, he knew that. He needed them to not hate him when they read it. He had never been great with words like Ponyboy was, but he wanted desperately to write that note in a way that would make them understand. He couldn't leave without that.

A million times he'd thought about it, and a second thought would follow almost every time, whispering darkly to him that he'd never have the guts, he'd never be able to end it.

But thinking of those attempts he'd left lie, written off as a bad start or the wrong way to say it - he could feel himself running out of ink. Like he was wasting it on all these useless, inconsequential tries. He knew he was running out of ink like a pen traces only half the lines it's meant to when it's near the end of its life. He knew it, he felt himself slipping on tears that he had not yet cried, and sinking.

Clearing his throat, Johnny jerked back to reality - cursing himself for doing it - and realized that he'd been staring after the boys where they'd left for at least five minutes.

The silence of the house engulfed him.

* * *

Thank you for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

After a day that dragged on for what seemed like forever, Johnny had fallen asleep on the couch, his engrossment in his thoughts finally giving way to darkness. His peace was disturbed, not long after, by the click of the door, and he toppled ungracefully off the couch.

"It's only me," said Emma, shutting the door behind her, and jumping at the sound it made. "I just - I had to get -" She broke off, like she had choked on her words.

"What time is it?" Johnny murmured groggily, fixing his hair as he leaned against the couch.

Emma, standing uncertainly inside the door, gazed at Johnny, purely startled, like she had already forgotten he was there.

"I don't know," she said, in an oddly distant, blank voice. Clutched protectively to her chest was her sketchbook, held so tightly to her that it seemed unlikely you could wrestle it from her if you lunged across the room and clawed at her hands ferociously. "Late anyway," she said, giving her shoulders a nervous sort of twitch.

"Something wrong?" said Johnny, raking his fingers through his hair, before writing it off as a hopeless case from his nap.

Emma's wide, staring eyes were alarming him; her cheeks were flushed and her expression had a wild and scatty sense to it, unsettling him.

"What makes you say that?" she muttered, looking like it was excruciatingly painful for her to even say that. She perched herself unsteadily at the edge of the couch, her eyebrows arched in a distracted way.

Johnny shrugged, reluctant to tell her that she was acting strangely. Though she was looking at him, her eyes were blank, and she refused to loosen her grip on her sketchpad.

Johnny rubbed the tiredness from his eyes, struggling to find words.

"You seem a little distracted," he told her, thinking it was a kind enough way to illustrate the odd behaviour.

Abruptly, Emma leaped to her feet. The sketchbook hit the floor with a splat and a tearing sound, and she gestured expansively towards him. "Johnny, you're bleeding!" she shrieked.

Johnny looked down to where she was pointing with a shaking finger, where a few drops of fine red had spattered on the floor in front of him. He glanced ruefully at his hand, where the buckle of his father's two-by-four had hooked into his skin earlier on in the evening.

"Aren't you - " Emma stammered, her eyes blazing. "Don't you - "

Johnny heaved a great sigh. He could see her anger flaring up, the confusion clear on her face. "It ain't any of your business," he snapped. "So why don't you keep your nose out of it?"

He hadn't meant for it to sound so mean - but he was just so _tired_ of everyone's pity, their indignation at every new scar they made a fuss over. He could take his father's bruising without a flinch; he didn't need to be protected like a wounded bunny.

A flash of hurt flickered across Emma's pinched, innocent face, and Johnny looked away with a bitterness like vinegar in his mouth.

"I know you can take care of yourself," Emma said dryly. "But you can't make it on your own all the time. No one can."

She sounded affronted, and without another word she left quietly, leaving a stony silence in her wake.

Johnny heaved another heavy sigh, his eyelids falling shut. Already he regretted snapping at her - she cared such a lot, and now all he'd done was throw it back in her face and upset her.

With a groan, he made to go up to his room, but the sketchpad she had left sprawled on the floor somehow found its way into his hands and he began to leaf through it with a critical interest. After flicking through a few of her drawings, which were done in fine pencil markings and ornamented with an artistry that was nothing less than beautiful, he nearly dropped the book. His fingers started to tremble with shock, and he felt his blood had run cold.

There, in plain black and white, the book was filled with the same drawing over and over again, slightly altered each time - a gate, on a gravelly path and surrounded by trees swaying in the wind, branches and vines whipping like tendrils. It was wrought from iron and ornately designed - goosebumps rose on his arms, and the sight of those pictures made the hair of on the back of his neck stand up.

He had known that Emma knew more than she was willing to disclose, but now a chill bore down on him like a train, and though he couldn't quell the need to find the truth from her, the whole idea of it was petrified him more and more, and he was scared to even ask her.

xxx

Johnny had neither of his parents' eyes. His mother's were dark and near black, like his, but they were small and beady, and sunken, giving her a permanently gaunt appearance. Almost always, they were narrowed and they darted around with an unrest and a resentment of the whole world. His father's were a flat hazel, and they were big and wide, though not deep. Often they were bloodshot and blinded by rage.

Now they were staring at Johnny with anger simmering just below the surface, ready to sear his skin to burning point. They didn't hold much emotion - and frankly that just hurt Johnny more. It felt like his father barely knew he was there, even when he was towering over him, ready to strike.

So he closed his own eyes so that he wouldn't see how little his father cared, reflected back at him unavoidably. They were shadowed and empty, mirroring nothing of affection or acknowledgement, or even _recognition _of Johnny.

As long as he was throwing a punch in his way, he was there - they _saw _him. Maybe he was crazy - maybe he liked being hurt that way, as long as his parents were looking at him and registering what they were seeing.

But Johnny had come to realize that he didn't want to leave. He had nowhere he could go - it wouldn't be fair. No, it felt like a prison cell. He'd probably be here until the house went up in flames, and him along with it.

xxx

"You gonna go home?" Ponyboy tried - unsuccessfully - to arch his eyebrow the way Two-Bit did, and waited for Johnny to do it.

"Quit it," Johnny grinned. "You just look like a clown."

Ponyboy frowned. "Soda picked it up in no time at all," he muttered.

"Heck," Johnny said. "Even he just looks dumb."

"You didn't answer my question, Johnny," Ponyboy pointed out.

It was coming to the end of April now, and the evenings had started to hold on to a fine stretch of light in the evenings before the sun went down in a torrent of fire, and the evening settled into a cool night.

"I think I'm just gonna head home," Johnny said, squinting his eyes against the dangerously low sun, still barely winking at him.

"You don't want me to come, do you?" Ponyboy said, chuckling, though its effect was somewhat dampened by the grimace he couldn't keep off his face off.

Johnny just smiled faintly. "Nah man," he said. "It's alright. I know the way."

Ponyboy paused before he replied, raking a scrutinizing eye over Johnny. "Sometimes I ain't sure if you do," he muttered. Then he sighed, and Johnny was still thinking of something to say in reply, before Ponyboy had looked away, drawling, "I gotta go. It's a school night."

Though he wouldn't have liked to admit it, Johnny could see the bitterness in the taut, thin line of his mouth.

"Tell Darry and Soda I said hi," Johnny said lightly, and with a curt nod Ponyboy made off in the other direction. He was only just around the corner, out of sight, and Johnny had taken barely four steps, blinking back pictures that seemed to have been burned onto the back of his eyelids, when he was accosted by a frantic, feminine voice.

"Johnny!" Emma came to an unsteady halt in front of him, swaying on her feet.

"Where is it?" she said, with feverish, saucer-like eyes protruding from their sockets with a disheveled, wild sort of grace. "I need it." Johnny, still blinking, was torn between shouting at her until his voice was hoarse, and falling on his knees to beg her for the truth. She was so panicked, she strode towards his house a few steps before it struck her - and she lurched awkwardly when it did - that he had not answered her, or said a single word, or even moved.

"I _need _it!" she said again, a pleading urgency in her bulging eyes. Her foot tapped against the pavement, and she was frowning in annoyance and impatience.

With a heavy sigh, he walked silently with her to his door, and let her inside, frowning himself as he drew down her sketchbook from a high shelf, and flicked the edges of the pages along his fingers. She reached for it, like a baby tempted with candy, wide eyes coming out her head, like she was about to devour the worn thing before his eyes. He jerked it back, taking in with concern her flaming eyes, her feverishly splotched cheeks.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"It's just my sketchbook, just my -" she broke off, catching his expression, and turned an even more violent shade of scarlet. "It's none of your business!" she snapped.

"Yes it is!" Johnny insisted, and Emma's eyebrows drew together.

"It has nothing to do with you," she murmured, her eyes narrowed shrewdly.

Drawing in a sharp, violent breath, Johnny gave the book a tiny shake. "It has everything to do with me," he replied, in a stronger, braver voice than he felt. "This thing, this - whatever it is," he broke off, shook it again, shook his head. "It's been _following _me around, I can't get it out of my head," he finished weakly, his voice breaking.

Emma's lips parted in surprise, but when she spoke, her tone was flat. "I don't - that's not - it -"

"What?" Johnny said - it was his turn to plead.

"The gate is from my head," she said frustratedly, pulling at her hair. "It's just my imagination, there's no way that you could -"

"So what," Johnny croaked. "I'm imagining it all?"

"I don't see how you could be, it's _my - imagination,_" she said through gritted teeth, her hands clenched furiously at her sides in fists that turned the skin on her knuckles white.

"What's it for?" he said exasperatedly.

She grimaced, her cheeks flushing again. "_Suicide Lane." _Johnny couldn't tell what she was - embarrassed or scared or upset.

He waited for more, and when it didn't come, he sat down on the couch, waiting for her to follow suit. She stood for a second, and he could see in her oddly blank eyes how deeply immersed in her own thoughts. And then something changed - the feverish gleam in her eyes smoldered like a doused match before dying completely.

"Fine," she said resignedly, her thin lips pulled tightly back over her teeth. "You wanna know, I'll tell you."

* * *

Thank you for reading, sorry for the long wait! Also, the ending will start to feel a little more abrupt after this. So be prepared for it!


	12. Chapter 12

I don't own the Outsiders. In case it's not clear, (haha...) this entire chapter will be Emma's story. So it's actually in first person. Also, for all you nay-sayers out there, it goes off on a complete and utter tangent, so if you don't feel like reading all about Emma, just skip to about halfway through and start skimming, I'm pretty sure you'll get the gist, and I won't be insulted! Anyway, onward!

* * *

Suicide Lane.

First off, what you need to know is that I wasn't kidding around when Suicide Lane first cropped up. I wasn't trying to make fun of suicide or anything - believe me, I took it real serious. So seriously, and then when I started thinking of this place, it started to scare me badly. It wasn't a joke. It's important that you know that before I start.

When I was nine, things at home started changing. My mom and dad were arguing a lot, and I could tell that my dad was getting more and more frustrated every day. There was something ... something _wrong _with my mom. We didn't know what it was, and she wouldn't talk to anyone, she wouldn't tell us what was going on. We tried to get her some help, but she refused. She kept wailing that she just wanted to be left alone. Sometimes, she'd stay cooped up in bed for days at a time. Dad had to start sleeping in the spare bedroom. She'd stay up in her room for days, and she wouldn't even leave to get some food. We ended up having to bring it to her in bed, and even then, we had to force her to even take a few bites.

If she was suffering, she never said. We could see it - but we were going through so much torture ourselves ... It was torture for everyone. We were all suffering because of my mom, and we had no idea whether her own suffering was worse than ours. Now that I think about it, I don't know if it would have been possible for mom to be in more pain than I was. But then I think, surely she must have been. To let any of this happen... Anyway, my dad thought she just needed time, and space, and she'd be back to normal soon enough. My mom was always so happy. And it was just like she switched off.

I know what it was now. She was dead already, on the inside. There was no life in her - she never wanted to get up, she never wanted to go outside. I was only nine at the time, but I can tell now that what she really wanted to do was just die.

I don't know why she never accepted any help. We thought about bringing her to loads of shrinks, doctors, mental hospitals ... She refused, wailing and screaming every time we brought it up.

But she never said anything about how she was feeling, and my father thought that she had contracted something, that she was actually ill. She was, in a way - her mind was diseased, completely poisoned by this time - and there was nothing to save her. She just wanted to escape, and she wasn't staying around for me ... or my brothers ... or my father. She felt more and more hopeless every day; she felt so trapped by her own life, and so desperate.

We all tried talking to her, but there was nothing we could say. Sometimes, I don't think she could even hear us. Sometimes, I think we were just white noise to her - something from her past life that should have meant something to her, but didn't.

My father had started to believe that she was getting better after a while - she started eating without protestations, though she cried the whole while, and she had to be spoon fed each bite like a baby. She wasn't my mother anymore. She wasn't anybody anymore.

But school started up, and my brothers and I went to school every day, and my father went back to work. It was quiet - that real scary kind of quiet - for a couple of weeks. And then one day, my dad was working late, and both my brothers had football practice, so I loned it home.

I wish I could say I'd seen it coming, but I don't like to think about that. I don't know if I could have changed what happened, whether I would have stopped it. I don't like to think about what I could have done, because by the time I got there - there was nothing anyone could have done.

The moment I opened the door, I knew there was something horribly wrong already. The house was a mess. Lamps and photographs had been thrown to the ground, tables were overturned. There were rips on the couch, and the pillows were astray around the room. The television had been pushed to the floor - I didn't stop to check, but it looked like it was cracked.

I called out for my mom. I ran straight up to her bedroom - that was a mess too. It was an unholy mess, even worse than downstairs. Everything was in shreds, every picture in the room was cracked and just tossed aside - all of my mom's nicest clothes were torn to ribbons ... There was nothing left.

It looked exactly like it would if you could picture my mom's pain. It was ... it was like I could hear her screaming as she ripped the room apart - I could almost see her. And - it really scared me, but I could see _myself _doing that. I could see myself just tearing everything to shreds and knocking over the furniture and shoving the photographs to the ground. It was so painful, the last few months. I think in another few, I would have cracked and done it myself.

And I know that my mom was already ... broken beyond ever fixing her, but she broke again that day.

The bathroom was locked, and I had started to cry. I felt so cold, and so lost, and my stomach was so knotted and tight with dread that I thought I was going to vomit, and I didn't even know what I would find. I remember pushing on the door like someone was chasing me with a knife, frantically trying to force it open. And it was so eerily quiet, and I was so scared.

I remembered that my dad kept a spare key to the bathroom in his bedside table, since it had a trick lock. I could barely walk - I stumbled when I went to get it, and I hit my head pretty badly off the corner of a door. And tears were just streaming down my face, and I could barely see.

I ran back to the bathroom with the key, and my hands were shaking so badly. I stood there for at least five minutes trying to fit the key into the lock, but I was just trembling so much. I wish I had never manged to open the door. And then ... My mother was there, lying out in the bathroom. She was covered in blood.

She'd - she'd slit her wrists.

I can't remember the few days that followed. The only things I remembered were that I puked - a lot, and that everyone seemed to be in a sort of dream state. It took forever to clean up the house - we were all just in shock. I could barely move for the next few months. I had nightmares, really horrible nightmares.

That's when I started thinking of Suicide Lane. I used to think to myself that that's where my mom was. That's where everybody who killed themselves ended up. And eventually, I allowed myself to imagine this quaint little village behind this real old iron gate, and I used to think that my mom was happy there.

I was nine - that's the reason the name is so stupid. I don't think I'd have called it that nowadays. I wouldn't have let myself dream it up at all, if I'd known ... Eventually, I couldn't get it out of my mind. Every time my life got so bad and I just wanted out, I'd imagine I went there, and I'd wait outside for hours and hours for my mom to cmoe out and get me.

Every time I felt crummy about myself, that's where I used to go. I don't know if I just wanted release, or if I actually wanted to kill myself - but I seemed to always end up there. When I started drawing, it seemed to get rid of it for a while - I wasn't feeling so goddamn awful all the time, and it helped me let out a lot of stuff that I was keeping bottled up to myself.

I used to _want _to go there. I wanted my mom back so badly, I used to think about going there all the time. I think I would've too. If you asked me, I couldn't tell you what was holding me here. I'd spend my whole day just dwelling in front of the place. I always dreamed of myself as being just outside the gate, screaming and wailing for my mother, but it would burn me every time I touched the iron.

I really, really considered just letting myself go there. I'd be with my mom, and it would all just end. And then I started thinking that - if I never went there, I'd never see my mom again. And the only way I'd see her again is if I killed myself. And I wanted to see her so badly - I let myself think that it was the only way I'd be happy.

But then I started drawing the gate over and over, like I was trying to draw it unlocked so that I could finally just go there. I never drew any of the village - or whatever you'd call it. I could never get it right. I guess it's because I've never been there. I've never experienced that. But it's strange, I know just what it looks like. All these cute little houses in a row, neat little lawns, and a market where you bought all your supplies. A little park where you could walk ...

Then it got to the stage where I was drawing the gate subconsciously, thinking of this place without knowing I was doing it. And then you picked up my sketchpad ... And here we are. Suicide Lane is where you go after you kill yourself. It's not really either Heaven or Hell ... It's where I always thought of every time I felt like I needed out.

And then, a couple of weeks ago ... My brother killed himself. It didn't come as a shock, really. I'd been expecting it. I thought I'd know how to handle it - that I'd be able to save him. But when it came down to it - I was just as useless with him as I had been with my mom. I hadn't got a clue of what to do or say to make it seem to him like things weren't so hopeless.

So that's two. I know it's strange, but I can't help but smile. They're together now. That's all I wanted.

It's not exactly my fault, any of it. But whenever I think of that gate - I just seem to freeze. I don't want anybody to know - and I've never told anybody before you. I would hate for you to think that if anything happened to me, it was because of this stupid gate I'd made up. Ever since I imagined it, I couldn't get it out of my head, and I've been so furious with myself. I always imagined it was such a lonely place, and I hated thinking of my mom there.

But it wouldn't leave me alone. Those sort of things never do.

* * *

Okay well ... This is the oddball chapter, and I know it's so severely depressing, but I hope you even sort of enjoyed reading it! And because this has literally no action, I'll update super-quick, I promise!


	13. Chapter 13

I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

The quiet in the room seemed to hang over them for a long time, and although he tried, Johnny couldn't swallow the lump in his throat. Once she'd launched into speech, Johnny had lapsed into complete silence and let her talk, let her stare into space and rattle off her entire story like she had it memorized. Although he could tell that she'd never told anyone any of what she'd just told him, she seemed to know it like the back of her hand.

Emma grimaced. "I wouldn't recommend it for a holiday or anything. You want my advice, you get it out of your head," she said solemnly, biting her lip.

Johnny sighed. "It ain't that easy." He felt like someone had punched them in the chest; his temples were beginning to ache and he was having trouble wrapping his mind around all she'd said. And she wasn't even crying. She wasn't the least bit tearful though her voice did shake in places and he felt such a glaring awkwardness hanging in the air around them. He was lost he had no clue what to say to her, or what she wanted to hear.

He didn't want to tell her that he didn't know if he'd be able to do that. He'd hardly managed to take in what she'd said; he was still breathing it in when she'd reached out gently and pried her sketchbook from his grasp, and as he looked down at her hands, Johnny's eyes were raking in something else, something new and a lot more concerning at the moment. For a split second, all she had said about _Suicide Lane _and whatever else, it was shoved unceremoniously to the back of his head, and he narrowed his eyes as he realized what he was seeing.

Emma evaded his eyes and turned away, all sad eyes and blank expressionless face.

She left, and Johnny gazed after her, the tragedy that seemed to have it harder than _he_ did, something he hadn't thought possible. She was a tragedy in every sense of the word, and even the ground she walked on and the air surrounding her summoned up a tragic aura, some hopelessness that seemed linked infinitely to this gate that she said led to Suicide Lane.

xxx

He didn't know where his parents were, and for the first time in a while he didn't care. The kitchen was a mess a brandy bottle had been smashed against the counter and lay in tiny shards all over the floor, around which the brandy was crusting and mingling with what looked very much like blood. The dirty dishes in the sink were a mountain high, and a set of glasses were still sitting in the middle of the table, rings of liquid still snaking around the bottom.

The next few days seemed to run into each other, and the only thing that Johnny wasn't numb for was images flashing across the back of eyelids like they'd been imprinted on his skin, not even able to escape them when he closed his eyes. A gate, Emma's face as she talked, a cupboard, the sketchpad, a note scrawled in his own handwriting...

Ponyboy leaned up against Johnny's kitchen counter, gazing out the window at the small and unkempt back garden, blurred by scattering raindrops on the glass.

"Man, I hope it don't rain like this all summer."

Johnny, rooting in the refrigerator for something that smelled safe to consume, threw Ponyboy a bemused smile. "Nah, it won't. And it ain't summer yet."

Ponyboy shrugged. "I can't wait for this year to be over. D'you he broke off, his face red with chagrin. "D'you think Soda will go back to school in the fall?"

Sighing, Johnny closed the refrigerator and grimaced. "No, Pone," he said. "I wouldn't put my money on it."

"He ain't as dumb as he thinks he is..." Ponyboy's indignation was clear in his eyes, but his voice weakened and he trailed off before he even finished his sentence.

"You're right," said Johnny. "But this is what he wants to do, Ponyboy. And Soda is always gonna do what he wants to he knows he's doing the right thing."

"You think him dropping out was the right thing?" Ponyboy said.

"Sure I do," said Johnny. "For Sodapop. You could never drop out or anythin' like that but for Soda, it was the right thing. Hell, that's what I woulda done if I was him."

Ponyboy nodded, looking slightly mollified, and then glanced around him. "Johnny, you got any aspirin or anything? My head's about to split in two."

Johnny collapsed into a kitchen chair, throwing together a sandwich for himself, and nodded. "Sure," he said. "There should be one around there somewhere."

Ponyboy sighed, and turned to rummage through the cluttered drawers in Johnny's kitchen, while Johnny wolfed down his sandwich so that they could leave.

"Hey - Johnny, what's this?"

Johnny turned to see what Ponyboy had found -

He didn't think he would ever forget the way time seemed to stand still when he remembered the note, how his heart had stuttered painfully to a screeching halt in his chest, before revving up, pounding and thudding mercilessly, slamming against his rib cage harder than it knew how, how the blur that had cast over his vision seemed to lift in one pure, crystalized moment, and his blood seemed to run cold.

Guilt gnawed at his stomach, making it twist and convulse. He could see the gang's faces, oddly floating in space in front of him as if detached from their bodies he couldn't imagine or describe how they would feel if they ever, ever in their life, came across that note.

He could see Ponyboy's expression in his mind's eye, once he'd unfolded that note. Ponyboy, who told Johnny as close to everything as he could, who knew Johnny better than anybody he'd be so hurt if he knew Johnny was feeling this way, if he knew that he'd kept that from him. Anxiety unfurled in his chest, and he fought back his nausea.

In a second, he was up and had snatched the note from Ponyboy.

"Oh, that's nothin', Pone," he said, struggling to keep his tone casual. "Just an old shopping list."

Ponyboy frowned but said nothing about how it looked very crisp and clean to be an old piece of paper, or about the fact that the Cades had never kept a shopping list ever.

"Listen," Johnny said. "I don't think you're gonna find any aspirin here."

Ponyboy nodded. "Yeah, I think I'll run home and get one - before my head explodes."

"I'll meet ya at the corner for the movie?"

"Sure, the movie starts at six," said Ponyboy, massaging his temples. "Soda said he might come too."

Johnny grinned. "He's sure he can sit through it?"wic

Ponyboy shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe he's more bored at home than he would be there."

"Wouldn't be hard, would it?" Johnny chuckled, and Ponyboy smiled faintly.

"I'll see you later," he hollered as he left, and Johnny let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in. He ripped the note up into halves, and then twice more, shaking his head as he did. What would Ponyboy have said if he'd seen it? He felt sick to his stomach, and he regretted the sandwich now, even as he chucked the torn slips of paper away, cringing away from his own sloppy handwriting scrawled all over them.

He took another deep breath, and told himself he'd never let that happen. Just thinking about it, he knew he could never put Ponyboy through any of that. He'd heard his parents say that suicide was selfish. He'd heard them say it when they were talking about their neighbors, about what he realized now had been Emma's family. Would Ponyboy think it was selfish if Johnny decided to leave it like that? And what would Dally say? He didn't even want to think about the rest of them - Steve's bitterness, Soda and Two-Bit's complete incomprehension of something like that. And if Johnny ended up in Suicide Lane like Emma said, he'd never see any of them again.

Shivering, he turned to get himself a glass of water, and found himself looking at a battered and bent cardboard box that he presumed Ponyboy had taken out - it's where he had left his note, and now the box, which had been taped together more than a couple of times, sat on the kitchen counter, overflowing with photos and papers, and bulging at the sides.

He scooped it towards him, his intent to shove it back into the cupboard at the back, but something caught his eye.

On top, in plain black and white, a small and blurred picture was placed - he recognized the two adults immediately, but only barely. They were obviously his parents, though a lot younger - his mother's hair hadn't grayed yet, she had none of the deep wrinkles she had now - the only creases in her skin were tiny, shallow lines around her eyes. His father's eyes had yet to become bloodshot, and he was missing his snarl. In fact, they were both beaming. That was what threw Johnny off - he couldn't remember seeing his parents smile like that ever. It seemed so unfathomable, looking down at them; they didn't seem like the same people.

His father had Johnny up on his shoulders - his hair was long enough, and he looked to only be about three. He was laughing at the camera. Taking the picture up in his hands gingerly, he had to smile at his three year old self, very clearly happy and carefree. So much had changed.

In his mother's arms, there was another child - a little girl with sandy brown hair like his father's, and even through the blurred picture, and though her face was half turned away, Johnny could make out even from a distance that she had big eyes just like his.

His heart quickened its pace, and he set down the photograph gently to one side, and plucked the next one up. Now there was just two children - one was him, not long after the first picture had been taken - a few months at most. He had no recollection of it whatsoever, of the little girl that he had his arms thrown around, and was smiling at.

Johnny frowned, and quicker and quicker he flicked through the pictures, becoming more and more frantic and worried after each one. Some were taken earlier on - with a baby that was clearly the little girl, his parents, full of youth and life.

His heart was now slamming against his chest painfully - he knew exactly what they looked like, and that was a family. A happy, working family. But the little girl ... He couldn't explain it, and just looking at the photographs he felt like vomiting. He felt like crying and screaming and dying all at once, and though it hurt to keep staring at her, he couldn't tear his eyes away from the girl. His hands were trembling, and his mind was whirling.

If he had tried to talk, he wouldn't have been able to. His thoughts were barely stringing together in a way that made sense, and he couldn't force down the bile in his throat. But confusion wasn't all Johnny was feeling - there was an uncontrollable, feverish rage bubbling in the pit of his stomach. His teeth were clenched and he bit back tears - he was _not _going to cry, at least not until he got some answers. He didn't realize he could feel so furious - his anger was making him tremble even more furiously, and his head was spinning dangerously fast, and he wondered idly whether he would pass out.

When his mother slammed the door shut upon her entrance, Johnny's eyes fell shut. His brain was telling him he should dart away before she could notice him, that right about now he should be stuffing all the pictures back into the box, and scarpering. But for once, his heart was telling his brain to shut up, and when his mother stalked into the kitchen, it seemed that his heart had taken over the use of his mouth, and he couldn't shut himself up, no matter how much he wanted to. Words were spilling out faster than vomit, and there was no stopping them.

"You wanna explain this?" he said, slapping down a few photos that were still clutched in his hand down on the table. He tried not to grimace; he couldn't keep his voice steady, and oddly enough, he was thinking about Dally, and what Dally would think if he heard Johnny's voice shake the way it was shaking. Dally would tell him to keep his cool and don't let anything bother him, don't let anything touch him.

With her beady eyes, she scanned over the photos. Her lips tightened and she paled, and she kept her gaze fixed on the box.

"Where did you find that?"

"It ain't as if you hid it pretty well," Johnny replied, in a quieter voice than he would have preferred.

"Why did you look at that?" Her voice raised; Johnny prepared himself - any second she was going to start screeching at him, and for once, he didn't care. He was ready for it now.

"Who is she?" he pleaded, in a pathetically small and weak voice.

"Well, who do you think?" his mother snapped. "She's clearly your sister - she looks just like that bum of a father of yours."

"Where is she?" he croaked.

"She's dead!" his mother yelled. "Is that what you wanna here? She's dead - you were three years old, and she had just gone two, and she died! One morning we woke up - and she never did! Are you happy now?"

Johnny blinked - she was closer to tears than he'd ever seen her in his entire life. He felt as if he was looking down at the two of them from a third party, from someone detached from the entire thing. Then, everything seemed to click into place. His father's drinking - his mother's complete hopelessness, the way she'd just given up on everything. Here it was, laid out in blurred and bent pictures in front of him.

Tugging at a loose thread at her blouse, his mother looked at the floor, looking more irritated than anything else. "And everything else changed after that," she said, in a rambling, mumbling voice. "Your lousy father started drinking - all we had was _you, _and compared to my little girl, you were just a waste of space. We knew we'd lost the wrong kid, and we didn't want to do anything anymore. Nothing was worth any of it anymore," she spat, her voice full of venom and spite.

Johnny felt like she had punched him in the chest and winded him horribly. She was looking around her, but he couldn't do anything but gaze at her. His moment of courage - fueled only by his rage - seemed to have receded and shrunk away to nothing now, and he had nothing more to say. The wrong kid had died - that's what she'd said. There had been two, and when one had died, it had been the wrong one. No _wonder _they hated him so much, no wonder his father drank and took it out on him. No wonder his own mother couldn't look at him.

"And we were still stuck with _you,_" she said balefully. "And we'll never get her back. So why don't you scram out of my sight before I throw you out in the rain?" she muttered, scrambling the photos together and dropping them back into the box, before she snatched that up too and held onto it tightly.

Numbly, Johnny stumbled out of the room. So many times he had asked for a reason, wondered beyond wondering what made his parents act the way they did. And now, here he had his explanation. And he knew - and so did the vomit rising in his throat - that he'd have been better off never finding out, that he would have preferred never to know what he'd just come to know.

He staggered up to his bedroom, though afterwards he hardly remembered any of what had happened, and collapsed onto his bed. He tried to stop himself crying, but his tears spilled over and there was nothing he could do to prevent them. He wished bitterly that he'd never looked in that stupid box - he wished he'd never listened to Emma muttering numbly about Suicide Lane. Now his mind was filled with that stupid gate, and all those pictures of a younger self and a little girl he never got the chance to know, and Emma's arms. Her arms, and the little bruises and tiny rips in her skin, like burns, dotted and peppered along the inside of her arms, along her vein line. Tracks etched along her pale skin.

He winced into his pillow, thinking that all these undecipherable and disjointed, unorganized thoughts whirling around his mind might destroy him before he got the chance to do it himself.

* * *

My main priority is just getting this finished now! But I'd love to hear some thoughts on it! And I know it all seems a bit jumbled right now (or not, I hope not) but all will be clear soon enough. Thanks for reading!


	14. Chapter 14

Believe it or don't, I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

His mother studiously ignored him the next couple of days, and even his father could only hit him half-heartedly, too exhausted and beaten to do anything else. Curiously, Emma was still more than prepared to listen to him, and Johnny was astonished to find that he didn't feel guilty spilling his heart out, and that she didn't mind hearing it. Then again, maybe she just liked it when the problems weren't her own ones.

"No wonder they hate me," Johnny mumbled again, twisting a loose splinter from the wood on the porch, and spinning it between his fingers.

"Oh Johnny, how could they hate you?" Emma said. "None of this was your fault."

"The wrong _kid died," _he said, through gritted teeth. "That's what she said. My own Ma told me that she wished I had died, instead of her."

Emma frowned. "She's probably just upset about it, she couldn't have meant it, she -"

"Upset for twelve years?" Johnny cut across her. "Don't you think she oughta forgiven me by now?"

"But Johnny," Emma replied, shaking her head. "There's nothing to forgive!"

Johnny swallowed bitterly, and shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe it would be better if I just died. Everyone would be better off," he mumbled. Emma didn't reply, and he looked up at her apologetically, grimacing. "Sorry," he muttered. "I didn't mean to say that, I just - "

"No Johnny," she interjected, frowning. "You did mean to say it. I just wish you hadn't."

Johnny's eyelids fell shut. "I'm just so tired," he sighed. He could see the gate before his eyes every time he let them close; each time it looked more and more welcoming, more inviting every day.

"I know," said Emma. "But Johnny ... You don't see it, and I know you don't think it, because of your folks an' all. But you can't give up." She shook her head. "You think I'd still be here if I didn't think there was something worth living for? Believe me, I've been through enough to make me wanna just pack it in -"

"I know you have," said Johnny heatedly. "I wasn't sayin' that."

"I know you want out," she said forcefully. "And so do I. But you just - you've got so much to live for. Look at your friends - they love you," she said pleadingly. "You couldn't possibly want to kill yourself when you got friends like that."

Johnny didn't reply. Of course he had thought about it - he had considered what it would do to the gang, how Dally would react, how Ponyboy would feel. But he couldn't help shake the thought that it wouldn't last forever, and they would learn quick enough to get on with life. But this - this seemed so infinite.

And he couldn't admit it to her, but he couldn't deny to himself that - knowing how much his parents wanted his little sister back, whose name Johnny didn't even know - if he could, he would have given her to them, instead of him. It would have been easier.

"Johnny please," Emma said quietly. "You shouldn't feel like that."

Johnny looked at her; he squirmed at the sight of the tracks running up her arms, but he hadn't said anything. He didn't know if he could. Every time he looked at them, he just felt nauseous. He didn't know how he would start, and frankly, he didn't even want to hear her talk about it. Without even a word, she'd said enough.

xxx

Before he left, he almost felt like screaming at his parents just to hit him, if it would make them acknowledge his existence. He'd had fists flying at him his entire life, and now he realized that he had grown so accustomed to it, it almost felt strange to be completely ignored by his parents. It felt worse somehow. If they had cared enough to hit him before, then they didn't anymore. Though it was selfish, and just terrible to think, he almost _wished _his father would hit him.

Leaving that day, to go hang out with the boys down at the lot, he wanted to think that he'd slam that door and walk out of his parents lives - never go back, and somehow scrape by on his own. But he knew he wouldn't. He was weak like that. He would always go back for more, and it felt to him like nothing would set him free at this stage. He was trapped, tied to his parents, and nothing would separate them. And that only made the fact that his parents couldn't care less more unbearable.

He could hear Emma's voice in his head, the rhythm of her speech in time with his feet pounding off the pavement, scattered phrases she'd never said before. He had felt sorry for her. Now it seemed she had receded back into herself, and it was disturbingly quiet around - and all she had left behind was some strewn bits of the story she'd told him, and images flashing in his mind, as jolting as lightning.

It never ended. No matter how long you walked along the road, it always led to the same Lane. And you could walk it for your entire life sometimes. But it never changed and it never stopped, and nothing in your life that changed would change where you were walking to.

Johnny wanted to tell Emma that. He wanted to tell her that he'd figured out, he'd sussed out her stupid Lane and her stupid quaint little village, and her stupid identical houses behind narrow houses, and stupid ancient street lamps and cobblestone paths, and the stupid courtyard where the market took place, and the stupid everything.

But he hadn't. Sure, he'd figured out a small part of it - but he would never, for starters, understand her reasoning for the place, or the way it was occupying her, nor the way it was beginning to occupy him in the same way. The way it was starting to consume them.

When he reached the lot, the gang hollered to him and passed him a smoke the moment he sat down, and grinned at him. Scars healed, no fresh bruises or cuts, and a smiling face - that's what they liked to see. And while he was happy to be there, and more happy to see them than Johnny would have thought possible, he felt oddly detached from it. He felt like he was surveying the scene from the sidelines, idly watching from outside his own body as whoever was in his body talked mindlessly and laughed where he was meant to laugh.

He wished he could just freeze it, hold it there for a few more seconds. Pretty soon, Steve would be off to do his evening shift, and Sodapop would have a date with a girl, and Ponyboy would have a date with a book, or his homework - and Two-Bit would wander off and keep himself busy.

The gang had never made Johnny feel like a baby or anything, but he still thought of himself like that in his own head. They would always look out for him, as much they could. Johnny knew that more certainly than anything else in the world, and with all the answers he didn't have, that was one thing he was sure of. But now, Johnny was starting to believe that there were things even the gang could not protect him from, and there were places that even they could not look out for them. They couldn't take care of him forever, no matter how much they wanted to. There were some things he would have to do on his own, and some places that they wouldn't be able to follow him.

But still, these boys had kept him alive. This wasn't subjective; this was an objective fact, and nothing anyone said or did would change that. And whether they could look out for him anymore or not, he was so infinitely grateful for the moment he was in; he smiled, seeing things through his own clear eyes, and lived in it.

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Haha, yeah I'm horrible with my itty bitty chapter! Thanks for reading!


	15. Chapter 15

Believe it or don't, I don't own the Outsiders.

* * *

A thin sheet of ice had coated the house since Johnny had discovered his _sister_, and both his parents were cold and empty, steadily refusing to acknowledge his existence. Johnny didn't know if his mother had said anything, but either way he didn't think it could help.

Johnny couldn't even speak to them anyway; he had no idea what to say. Not that he ever did.

He found himself wishing he'd asked what his sister's name was when he had the chance. She couldn't have been more than two when she'd died. He'd never know her, but he wished he could at least know her name.

He knew that no one could miss what they never had, but Johnny spent a lot of his time contemplating what would have happened if she hadn't died. How different would Johnny's life be? Would his parents still harbor a flickering ember of hatred for their own son, the 'wrong child' that they were now 'stuck with'?

It hurt to think about things like that - but Johnny couldn't stop himself. There was a hollowness unfurling in his chest, and he ended up trying to fill it with _her, _this sister he'd never know, who could have changed everything.

Whenever his thoughts strayed, they strayed to Suicide Lane. It was weird - he couldn't make up his mind how he felt. One minute he was terrified by it, the next he was cautiously wary and dubious, after that it seemed like a warm, homely place to him. It threw him off every time he thought of it. He didn't know what he wanted. And as May came to a close, he felt more confused every day.

He'd become quite good at avoiding his parents - he managed to slip on his jeans jacket and tiptoe downstairs without them noticing, on a Saturday that was relatively quiet at home.

"Mm, they had somethin' in the paper on it," his father was saying gruffly.

"That entire family's more trouble that it's worth," his mother muttered scathingly.

"Ain't much left now."

His mother sniffed as Johnny crept downstairs. "I didn't think she'd last very long," she remarked. "But to die the way she did..."

"Dumb kid," his father replied, disgruntled. "Messing around with drugs like that."

"Her daddy must be awful cut up..."

His father snorted. "He should be glad to have her out of his way."

A bitter taste sprung to Johnny's mouth - he wasn't surprised that his father would think like that. That was all he needed to hear to know that his father didn't care about him one bit. And he never would.

He slipped out, letting the door slam shut satisfyingly behind him.

He wandered over to the Curtises', thinking he'd see if Ponyboy might want to do something.

"Sorry Johnny," said Darry."You just missed him, he went down to the DX to see Soda and Steve." When Johnny got there, Darry was lying out on the couch, his face obscured by an open book that he'd given up reading and now just used to keep his face cool.

Johnny collapsed into the couch, and wrinkled his nose. Darry sat up and, noticing his expression, chuckled.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "I don't get how they ever get any work done when they're working the same shift. Goofin' off is their middle name."

Johnny laughed, remembering Soda and Steve when they used to have nearly all the same shifts, which was the bones of a year ago.

"And their boss knows it too," said Darry, shaking his head. "Remember when they used to share nearly all their shifts?"

Johnny had to smirk. "Yeah," he snorted. "Me and Dally had a bet on who'd be fired first."

"Oh yeah?" Darry grinned. "Who were you betting on?"

"Steve," Johnny said quickly. That was a lie - he had his money on Soda, since he thought that Steve could at least pretend to work, but he didn't want to say that to Darry for some reason.

Darry sighed. "Yeah well - it's been a while. I wonder was that on purpose."

Johnny shrugged his shoulders. "Hell, Steve and Soda have both grown up a lot since then. Specially Soda, after takin' the full time job down there."

Darry flinched, almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, I guess they ain't goofin' off much anymore."

"So you got some time to yourself, huh Dar?" said Johnny. Darry nodded, grinning weakly. "Glory, can you even remember the last time that happened?" Johnny said jokingly.

"No I can't," Darry laughed. "It's awful quiet 'round here. If you wanna do something with Pony, why don't you head down to the DX?" he suggested. "Steve and Soda won't be done for about an hour."

Johnny shrugged, wrinkling his nose again. "Nah, I won't," he said. "It's always so crowded on the weekends."

"Yeah," Darry muttered. "I wouldn't mind, but most o' those broads ain't interested in having their cars fixed."

Johnny nodded. "It ain't cars they're interested in at all."

Darry rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Well, Soda does a good job," he replied. "And he definitely - uh, brings in a lotta business."

Johnny sniggered, "Maybe _that's _why he ain't been fired yet." Darry laughed loudly.

"Well," said Johnny. "I'mma head down and kick around a football for a while. Maybe I'll see the guys on their way home."

"Sure," said Darry. "They'll probably walk past that way. If they come here, I'll tell 'em you're there."

"Thanks," Johnny grinned. He thought Darry looked tired - his eyelids were heavy, and his face was beginning to look slightly drawn. "What are you gonna do, Darry?"

Darry sighed. "I think I'll take a nap. While I still can," he added.

Johnny said goodbye and loped down to the vast field at the corner of the block, where they often hung out, or had rumbles.

It wasn't early in the day; he could feel the sun weakening as it began its descent, but it hadn't gotten too cold yet.

Johnny liked the temporary solitude while he was there alone. It was like a moment of relief , where he could let out the breath he'd been holding in for a long time, and gulp in several fresh new ones. Deciding that it wasn't a bad time to practise a few kicks - everybody else was a lot better than him at football - he started a hunt for a football.

He found one after a few seconds - it was probably their own - but it was deflated and oddly misshapen, and it was sort of depressing to look at. Casting it aside, Johnny narrowed his eyes against the low sun, and scanned the lot for another.

The sun was now setting steadily, throwing a reddish, hazy golden tint over the city. His vision refocused when an expensive-looking Mustang pulled up, and seemed to hover there ominously.

Already, Johnny felt cold right down to the nerves in his toes - in fact, his feet felt like two blocks of solid ice, frozen on to the ground.

He watched four Socs - undoubtedly Socs - pile out of the car, and meander in his direction, eyeing him with relish. One sneered.

"Hey grease," he grinned with malice. "You here all by yourself?"

Oddly, Dallas sprung to mind. He'd probably have already sunk his fist into one of their jaws. He would keep his cool, talk back, threaten the Socs worse than they could ever threaten him. Johnny knew hostility when he saw it, and all he could think was how he should act like Dallas.

And he thought of Steve, who had held off four guys with nothing but a busted bottle, only a few months ago. Trying not to panic, he flicked his eyes around for a bottle or piece of broken glass, anything. He tried to speak, but words wouldn't come out.

He returned his eyes to the Soc, against the sun's dangerously low angle; rings glinted on one of their hands, nearly blinding him.

"Why don't we cut out his tongue, if he ain't gonna use it?" one said. Johnny went numb, the other Socs laughed raucously - and Johnny started to run.

He was fast, but he knew from the moment he started that it wasn't any good. Two of them caught hold of him and forced him to the ground, and he felt a knee collide with his stomach. He saw stars and felt the wind go out of him. Already his jaw was throbbing painfully where one of them had struck it, and he couldn't keep struggling against the two that were holding him down.

The snarling, grinning Soc drew back his fist, and Johnny could see the flash of his rings in the sun before his knuckles flew into Johnny's jaw.

He felt his lip slice open, and he could taste blood in his mouth. He didn't know whether someone had brandished a knife or if it was the guy's rings, but he felt his skin rip at his temple, it burned and seared down to his cheekbone, and Johnny could feel the warmth from the blood that was seeping from the gash.

Then there was a shout in the distance, a car honk followed by the echoing sound of backfiring - the Socs scarpered, yelling rapturously as they did, and left Johnny there, groaning.

He couldn't move. He could swallow the blood in his mouth, and it made him light-headed. It was suddenly very cold - his jacket had ripped when they'd caught him, and the Socs must have yanked him out of it.

And then, detached from the rest of him, he thought how much easier it would be to just have it end here. He almost found himself _wishing _that those Socs had finished the job. In that minute, he wanted more than anything to stay forever in the neat and peaceful neighbourhood Emma had described. But that wouldn't happen now - Suicide Lane was for a special group of people, who had no one to save them, and who hadn't been able to save themselves.

His eyes fell closed without his permission, and he felt like he could almost see Emma, as she sat outisde the iron gates he'd spent so long contemplating, and she gazed in at the tranquility behind them. Strange to think that it of all places would see so serene - so happy even.

"It ain't long enough," she'd say. "You ain't had long enough, and you know that. I want you to remember that. And not a single person in there had long enough. That gang of yours," she'd smile. "They love you and they'll save you. That's why you'll never end up in there." Her head would nod towards the houses. "And that's why they gotta keep these gates locked. Ain't no one in there had anybody to save them."

He wanted to scream. Maybe it would be better there, in that place where people would understand. He drew in sharp, shallow breaths, trying to block the pain of his stomach, his pounding head, and his stinging cuts. He was terrified still, hearing that Soc's voice over and over his head.

He felt so helpless - all he had to do was think. Think about those Socs, the way they'd smiled, the force of their fists. Think of how he'd like to go to somewhere he belonged. Somewhere he'd be loved.

But the gang. They loved him. Sure, it wasn't the same as having your parents love you, but it was damn sure something. Everybody needed someone to care about them, and when he thought about it, Johnny had six people who loved him like their own brother. How could he ever give that up?

He had so much to live for. Emma had told him that.

Emma. Thinking about it, Johnny realized - he had _seven _people who cared about him.

The image of her sprung to his mind, biting her lip as she told him about Suicide Lane, the pitiful tracks on her arm.

Suddenly everything clicked into place - his own instinct, and something his father said that he should have paid a lot more attention to, abruptly made sense in his head.

He knew he'd never see her again. She was gone, he knew that. And somehow, Johnny only hoped she was happy, wherever she had ended up.

He sucked in a breath; the pain in his stomach was only beginning to ease. He didn't know if he'd be able to stand - he still felt pretty dizzy, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to stay conscious. Already he could feel himself beginning to drift.

He hadn't allowed himeslf to cry, but it was becoming harder and harder to stop himself, no matter how hard he thought that he wouldn't let himself.

There was a shout, and wildly Johnny thought that maybe it was Ponyboy, or Steve, or one of the gang, coming to rescue him like they always did. They were only thing keeping alive, he knew that now. Johnny closed his eyes, and wondered what would happen next.

* * *

It's over!

First off, I need to say a big massive thank you to TheNightimeSky, without whom this story would definitely not be here. So thank you dear, for talking with me for hours and going over all my plans, doubts and second-thinking. None of anything I do would ever happen without you!

I know - _that _can't be the end. I think I just wanted to take a look at Johnny's life somewhere in the middle, instead of solving all his problems. And I think I ended up doing it...

So thanks to everyone who read and reviewed!


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